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QCassidy352

macrumors G5
Original poster
Mar 20, 2003
12,127
6,201
Bay Area
I am trying to switch my girlfriend...

One thing that she wants to know about macs is whether there is an equivalent to windows explorer on a PC. That is, she wants a program that will display every existing file on the hard drive.

I've never heard of such a thing, and never even knew it existed on PCs until she told me. Since there are thousands of files that most people don't understand the point of, I don't know why you would want to see all files in a window at once. But she likes this feature on PCs... it is possible on a mac?
 
id you just want to SEE every file on your hard disk, then open terminal and type:

cd /
du -ka

...of course seeing it that way tells you little, but one can be sure every single file gets listed, and its size too ;)
 
Finder is the equivalent of Windows Explorer. You can see the system files and stuff through terminal, but why would you ever want or need to do that?

Ask your girlfriend what she really wants to do. Show her the Mac way to do whatever she's trying to do.

Don't be too heavy handed when you try to get somebody to switch. I've noticed 5 stages of switching, just like there are 5 stages of grief--in fact they're the same. You can't rush somebody or they'll throw up defenses.
 
Re: equivalent to "windows explorer"?

Originally posted by QCassidy352
I am trying to switch my girlfriend...

One thing that she wants to know about macs is whether there is an equivalent to windows explorer on a PC. That is, she wants a program that will display every existing file on the hard drive.

I've never heard of such a thing, and never even knew it existed on PCs until she told me. Since there are thousands of files that most people don't understand the point of, I don't know why you would want to see all files in a window at once. But she likes this feature on PCs... it is possible on a mac?
What she wants is the column view in the Finder.
 
Originally posted by bousozoku
You might take a look at this shareware called Macintosh Explorer: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13237

It might be exactly what she wants.

This is the only solution that would give her what she's looking for. She doesn't really want to "see" all the files, she wants to be able to browse and manage all of the file system from a single unified access point (tree pane.)

This utility looks like it will do the trick, wish I knew about it when I had my iMac.

The new Finder is more Explorer-like but not enough. Hopefully this utility has context-sensitive menus.
 
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