Who will be posting a link to Opus in the video's comment section?
I talk about "Directory Opus" in basically every comment I do on Youtube, when it comes to file managers or "switching to Linux" related videos. I will get banned at some time for advertising or being mis-detected as some kind of a comment bot or spammer.. o)
You can't post links in Youtube comments, if you don't want your comment to be removed automatically. Youtube is very picky about what you put in your comments. It's not fun at all to write comments there. Sometimes you get it through, but it will live in a shadow ban, not visible to the rest of the world, modern times! o)
OTOH, as an IT professional/power user, I couldn't imagine going back to doing development work on Windows. The close integration of near-Linux terminal (or iTerm2) with all GUI-based tools is just too good. Doing DevOps work on Windows was a constant struggle to resolve the disparity between Windows filesystem and a Linux VM (such as Ubuntu in WSL).
The new Macbooks are pretty nice and extremely stable.
But yes, if there is ONE THING that macOS doesn't have, it's a really good file manager like Directory Opus. Hence I use DOpus in Windows under Parallels, and have given it full access to the macOS filesystem. That works, but I wish there was a macOS native DOpus.
Yeah, same deal with Mp3-files.. Forklift, Path Finder, Commander One.. none of them are capable of displaying Mp3 tags in columns so that it would be possible to sort music files by track# tag (when they don't have track# in their file names). Bizarre.. it seems like a pretty common use case.
Despite being likely the best file manager for Mac, Forklift only has about 10% the functionality of DirectoryOpus. There's a massive black hole for file managers on MacOS (or Linux for that matter), that reach beyond toy status.. which is a sad state of affairs indeed. I still fondly remember using DO on my Amiga 2000.
Ah, yes, Amiga 2000 (also my second computer
). It was appropriately named, as it was about 15 years ahead of its time.
I know GPSoftware has commented on this before, saying that they're a small company and would find it difficult to have enough manpower to do a full conversion. But, it wouldn't need to be a full conversion to start with. It could be "DOpus Lite" that would initially implement the basics of DOpus, and it would still be the best file manager on macOS. More functionality could be ported gradually.
I have now analyzed what would be needed to add in Apple's line-up to make me consider switching to Mac on the main system (using Windows with Parallels):
MacBook Air 13" Liquid Retina 13.6" 2560 Ă 1664 16:10 224 ppi fanless
MacBook Pro 14" Liquid Retina XDR 14.2" 3024 Ă 1964 16:10 254 ppi
MacBook Air 15" Liquid Retina 15.3" 2880 Ă 1864 16:10 224 ppi fanless
MacBook Pro 16" Liquid Retina XDR 16.2" 3456 Ă 2234 16:10 254 ppi
- iMac Retina 21.5" Retina 4K 21.5" 4096 Ă 2304 16:9 218 ppi
+ iMac Retina 22" 21.8" 4032 x 2520 16:10 fanless
iMac Retina 24" Retina 4.5K 23.5" 4480 x 2520 16:9 218 ppi
- iMac Retina 27"
- iMac Pro Retina 5K 27.0" 5120 Ă 2880 16:9 218 ppi
Studio Display
Pro Display XDR Retina 6K 32.0" 6016 Ă 3384 16:9 218 ppi
MacBook is already "world's most popular laptop" according to Apple, thanks to the fanless Air models, and I wouldn't deny that claim.
iMac is "worldâs best allâinâone desktop" according to Apple, but I firmly disagree.
Above is my suggestion to make iMac "worldâs most popular allâinâone desktop", simply adding a particular (fanless) iMac 22" model with a modified Retina 4K display (which was previously removed) beside the current 24" one. ![]()
Apple's Hardware Chief is likely not reading this, so I will probably stay on Windows as the main system.
Windows doesn't have a proper all-in-one desktop either, but at least it lets you assemble a good approximation.
Regards
Guido
JPEG developer
I just bought a Mac Mini for personal use at home. I've had iPhones and iPads for a long time but, otherwise, my 40+ years of use has been with Windows.
Is installing Parallels and doing what you stated above complicated? Any pointers?
I'd love to continue to use DO within MacOS.
I wrote kind of a tutorial in the How to support... thread.
Parallels has automatic installation option including Windows ISO download which should be easy.
I chose manual installation option for reasons mentioned in ARM support thread.
It seems I had luck with acquiring a perpetual license for Parallels Desktop 20 Pro Edition: This isn't offered on the Parallels website, and is no longer available from the selected retailer.
I want to install only native software in the virtual machine, as well as on the macOS host system, so I would wait for native ARM version of DO.
But if you need it, emulation seems to work well in many cases.
Regards
Guido
JPEG developer
Funny, the Amiga was my second box too. I started with an Atari 800.
Dude, you donât necessarily need a file manager with built in file renamer when thereâs dedicated tools with good UI like NameMangler.
Have any of you guys considered contacting developers of Forklift and Path Finder, make the request for the functionality you need? Describe the use case, explain that thereâs no other app providing the functionality etc.
Maybe some of you are looking at file managers and expecting them to be photo managers, if so macOS already has dedicated tools like GraphicConvertor, it can build filter sets with all, the data that will make you cream your pants.
macOS has many many dedicated tools with way better UI/UX than similar tools on Windows. Example, NameManger vs Bulk Rename utility, the latter has an abomination of a UI.
DO is awesome, granted but we can achieve everything we need with a handle full of dedicated tools on macOS, theres many many more awesome macOS developers building higher quality apps than there is awesome windows developers.
Microsoft doesnât have an Operating System though! Everything starts and end with that point. The guy who commented years ago that M$ wrote NT OS from scratch is either a M$ employee or fictional character with a fictional dreamlike imagination.
Facts are x86 CISC is a legacy architecture, its was a clunky architecture back then compared to RISC, and M$ has a junkyard OS with legacy form Windows 3.1. Right click on network drive in file explorer get properties and check out the windows 3.1 era icons still in use.
M$ need to pull their finger out, pick up either a BSD or a Linux distro, pick or buy a desktop environment, modify an existing window manager, port only modern frameworks to the Unix OS and start running modern apps on this OS. Abandon x86, and OS canât be named âWindowsâ or âFoldersâ or any word that has a UI element. Make it clear to developers they have 10 years to upgrade their win32 apps to new frameworks/APIâs to get them running on the Unix OS, after 10 years Windows era OSâs officially abandoned unsupported.
I doubt M$ has the talent to pull it off though, their strategy of trying to implement a unix environment inside of Windows is not desirable.
Meanwhile Huawei built the new OS HarmonyOS Next on unix, M$ is sure to loose the Chinese market. Google making a desktop Android OS also unix.
Google could take share from M$ if their OS has built comparable office like apps.
The guy who wrote NT OS more or less from scratch is Dave Cutler.
You find the story in my JPEG on the Mac article.
Notice that NT is the most commonly used OS on the desktop with the most versatile hardware range.
Unix is only on the second place with macOS (Darwin/NeXTSTEP).
Windows has solid development tools with decades long heritage.
There is Visual Studio from Microsoft and RAD Studio with Delphi and C++Builder from Borland/Embarcadero.
Apple has Xcode, Google and Linux have nothing in comparison.
Microsoft Office runs native on Windows and Mac, which is enough and no other desktop platform needed.
Regards
Guido
JPEG developer
By the way, Delphi, celebrating 30th anniversary this year, is still in its infancy (similar as JPEG).
The recently released Delphi 13 version introduces a conditional ternary operator for the Object Pascal language, which is long available in other languages (?: in C).
Had Directory Opus been written in Delphi with the cross-platform FMX (FireMonkey) GUI framework, they could easily (well, more or less) provide a native Mac version, because there are native Delphi Toolchains to target macOS, both Intel and ARM. ![]()
Regards
Guido
JPEG developer
If Opus had been written in Delphi we would've had to re-write it in something else a long time ago as Delphi took too long to get 64-bit support (although it has it these days) ![]()
(Windows file managers need to be (at least partially) 64-bit in order to use the same shell extensions and similar plugins that work in File Explorer.)
Leo, it was just a thought, not too serious. ![]()
Today they are still lacking Windows ARM target support.
They are getting many requests and I'm sure they are seriously considering and probably already working on it, but hesitate to give any target date. I'm sure it will come sooner or later...
Currently they rely on emulation.
They have very nice people, see this discussion about the topic.
Regards
Guido
JPEG developer
I agree with your point in general.
However, Linux and Mac have JetBrains IDEs that are probably the most advanced IDEs out there. Working a lot with Visual Studio, I would say JetBrains is certainly on the same level.
But then you need to see what actual app you are developing. If it is a Web app, then I think you get the same experience on Linux or Windows, because the IDE you are using is literally the same IDE (for example, JetBrains WebStorm).
However, Windows is definitely a better target for desktop apps. The backward compatibility of Windows is just insane. At my work we have manuals for customers that were written 20 years ago, and they haven't changed at all. All the "ancient" UI dialogs are still present and function exactly the same way.
We have third-party binaries from companies that no longer exist. We don't care, they still work ![]()
Yes, I'm still occasionally using a program which was last updated over 20 years ago, Hex-Wizard:
It simply does what I need and there has been no need for something more fancy.
JetBrains is too heavy on virtual languages like Java after my fancy.
What I like about Xcode and RAD Studio is the total absence of virtual languages and use of only native compiled languages.
Even Visual Studio is too heavy on virtual .NET after my fancy, but at least still has a prominent native side.
There are only five important languages with native compilation and IDE backing in my opinion:
C, C++, Objective-C, Delphi/Object Pascal, and Swift.
Regards
Guido
JPEG developer
There are only five important languages with native compilation and IDE backing in my opinion:
C, C++, Objective-C, Delphi/Object Pascal, and Swift.
I understand your bias towards native languages, given your specialty. I would also add the Rust language to this list.
JetBrains is too heavy on virtual languages like Java after my fancy.
That is true. It is entirely written in Java, indeed. But the surprising thing is that they managed to make it work even faster than Visual Studio in some cases.
The fact that the language is not native is not such an issue for many types of applications. Most often, problems are caused by an architecture, not the tooling and languages.
Thanks for the suggestion, but I do not add the Rust language to the list, because it has no IDE backing.
Apple (Xcode) and Embarcadero/Idera (RAD Studio) do not support Rust.
Microsoft does support Rust, but the Visual Studio IDE does not support Rust.
Microsoft requires Visual Studio Code (VS Code) as an "IDE" for use with Rust.
VS Code is not a true IDE in the stricter sense.
Virtual languages require an intermediate layer called the runtime environment between the application and the operating system.
This additional layer IS the problem, which does not exist with native languages.
Native languages may have runtime libraries, which is different.
Regards
Guido
JPEG developer
