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FinderPop Is The Tool Apple Forgot To Put Into OS X.

FinderPopThe Mac is chic and successful again, and that means higher prices for Mac software, right? Yes, of course. That’s how a capitalistic society works.

So, just when you were afraid there would be no more free utilities for Mac OS X, along comes a pintware Classic tool, updated for Leopard.

Yeah, baby. FinderPop is back and it’s a shagalicious as ever and still pure pintware. If you’ve ever wanted your Mac’s Finder to do a few things in fewer steps, check FinderPop. It’s what it does to the Finder that makes pintware software worth, well, whatever a good, cold drink is worth.

If you’re new to the Mac, you may never have heard of FinderPop, the quintessential Mac utility of yesteryear. Free, functional, fabulous. Did I mention that it’s free? Well, FinderPop is as close to free as you can get and stay sober, one of the few remaining members of the pintware generation.

FinderPop was loved by Mac users in years past as the little utility that could, and did, by adding a pint or two of additional functionality to the Mac’s Classic Finder. OS X users have a better Finder than Mac Classic, and more tools, yet somehow, developer Turlough ‘Turly’ O’Connor has added functionality and kept the price to pintware.

What does FinderPop do? A little of everything that you Mac’s Finder doesn’t do, those nifty, handy, dandy, triple-distilled functions Apple conveniently forgot to put into OS X.

Why, because they were certain Turly would develop them anyway, thereby saving them millions of dollars on development costs, by keeping Turly satisfied to live his life out surrounded by friends of the not-quite Cracklin’ Rosie genre.

FinderPop adds new contextual menus to your Mac’s mouse in the Finder. Right click on something in the Finder and you get a menu with things to do. FinderPop gives you more things to do.

Things like Delete, Copy, Move, Open, Preview, QuickLook and more. How much space does FinderPop take up? It’s so space saving that you can’t even find it unless you look. Instead of taking up valuable real estate in the Menu Bar, just click any open space in the Menu Bar and FinderPop, well, pops up in early 21st century hierarchical goodness.

It’s the zero-real-estate launcher for the rest of us. FinderPop also has a Quick Process Menu built-in. Click in the unused Menu Bar space and you get a menu of functions. Command-click in the same location and you get a look at what’s running on your Mac.

Shift-click on the unused part of the Menu Bar and you get a look at what’s on your Mac’s desktop and a list of any disks connected to your Mac. If you have a gazillion windows open on your Mac, FinderPop makes it easy to see what’s on the Desktop without going there.

Wait. There’s more. Operators are standing by to take your order, and if you download now, you’ll also get the ability to extend your FinderPop menu to include whatever you want to include as part of a built-in launcher.

FinderPop launches Mac software wherever you are (on your Mac, not down at Taco Bell or while walking the dog).

Drop a few often used Aliases into the FinderPop Folder and they instantly show up in the FinderPop menu as easily and quickly accessible icons-- a built-in launcher that you control.

Many Mac users lament the day when the Mac came with only a one-button mouse. FinderPop of old defeated the lack of a multi-button mouse by using a clever ”click and hold” to bring up additional functions. It still works.

Click and hold down the mouse button for a second in the Finder, let go, and FinderPop’s hierarchical menu pops up.

imageFinderPop is one of those wonderfully simple, highly elegant, very configurable little utilities that blends in to the Mac’s Finder. Once you use it, you’ll love it.

Click the image to see a close up of the FinderPop system preferences, and Click Here for another view.

Of course, there’s that nagging conscience issue, since FinderPop is mostly free, but highly Pintware. Turly indicates often that he loves his pints.

You’ll love FinderPop almost as much as some Mac software developers love their pints.

Got another favorite “pintware” Mac utility that you can’t live without? Share your experience in the Comments section below.

Check out the daily list of our 9 Word mini-Reviews at NoodleMac, and Kate's daily in-depth Mac software reviews at PixoBebo.

   • Article by Alexis Kayhill • Published on Friday, June 27, 2008
   • Category: Low End • 4 Reader comment(s) • Email This • Digg This • Shop Now
  Page 1 of 1 Page(s) for this article.

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Mac360 readers talk back. View their comments below or post your own comment to this article. Comments are moderated by the Mac360 staff. Or, post comments in the Mac360 Forums. It's mostly anonymous, there's no obligation, and no cost, so join in-- it's free, fun, low in calories, low in carbs, non-fat, and mildly addictive-- like chocolate and blondes.

Readers Talk Back:
droughtquake says:

Lantz, you should check out VersionTracker.com, their VersionTracker Pro software can scan your drive(s) and bring up a chart of the applications & utilities with their versions and the current versions. It also provides you with a summary of what the application does (and how other users rate it) and a link to download the latest version. You can have VTP skip applications if, for example, you haven’t updated to Adobe CS3 yet.

   — Posted on Thu Feb 28 at 11:20 pm by droughtquake

zahadum says:

the classic-era app was called ‘agent installer’ i recall - but there was no real intelligence behind it.

appfresh is the osx app that does this—but instead of being based on a real wsdl-based co-ordination service (or even just a modest rss platform), it is just a front-end for an sns repository called ‘iusethis’.

still, it’s useful dispite its thin architecture.

   — Posted on Thu Feb 28 at 9:05 pm by zahadum

iggy pence says:

Alexis, great find. I remember FinderPop and just downloaded it and installed it on my Mac. Well done. Works great.

Lantz, I remember some kind of utility that did what you mention, but I’ve since moved on to MacUpdate’s tracker. I think VersionTracker has one, too.

Mac360 turned me on to AppFresh which seems to do the same thing for free.

   — Posted on Thu Feb 28 at 4:59 pm by iggy pence

Lantz Newberry says:

Ah Yes I remember FinderPop with much affection.  I supplied Turly with a few pints in the past.  When setting up my Macs, and the many I did for clients, FinderPop was a mandatory install.  I’ll have to check it out once again.

One utility I greatly miss use to scan my Macs applications to see what apps needed updates.  It would go check your apps against its database and then automate the upgrade process much like Apples Software Update.  If the company didn’t allow for automated updates it would point you where to download it so you could manually do the update.  It was a great piece of software and saved much time.  You had to pay a yearly subscription which was well worth the trouble it saved me.  I do graphics for a living and have dozens of apps on my Macs.  I can’t recall the name but I think the company was Insider something.  Does anyone know what app I’m referring to?  When OSX came out the company dropped the app and had said there was no OS X equivalent.  Does anyone know of an equivalent today?

   — Posted on Thu Feb 28 at 3:47 pm by Lantz Newberry

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