That's fine, but you still have to dig through folders. I hate digging through folders. I rarely open the Applications folder, being that it is such a mess, if I don't have to. I don't even open my hard drive very often.

The Go menu is a lame excuse for the fact that Apple decided that the Apple menu was out dated.. but it was a good place to put aliases. I do use the keyboard shortcuts, but the rest of the Go menu is somewhat redundant, as you have these folders in your sidebar. I use Fruitmenu, and many of my often, and not so often used apps are lunched from there.

I think the OS X Finder is poorly designed in general. I dislike the column view as it's implemented in OS X (Greg's Browser was better) and I REALLY dislike the column view in file dialog boxes, since there's too many columns, you have to resize them to see long names (without hovering over each file), and it takes you too far back in the file path. Once you open a new window you have to start all over again! GRRR! Then of course you can't sort the column by date modified, etc. I use list view almost exclusively, unless I need previews.

If you can get away with applications being in sub folders, that's great. I certainly did that in OS 7 through 9. What I do now is use Dragthing for groups of apps (Music, Graphics, Web Design, Utilities, etc.). I can get to them from any application... My DragThing palette hides, except for its tabs, when I don't need it, and pops up from the right hand side when I hover my house there... no need to switch to the Finder, open a new window and start digging... LaunchBar is another goodie for some things. PITA for others. I know Apple thinks SpotLight is a launcher... Good for finding files though.

You can easily do this by making a folder and filling it with aliases, which can then be put anywhere.. desktop, Dock, or even in your Documents folder, and then drag it to the tool bar on a Finder window, or the Sidebar.

These are my ways of doing things, and I'm not trying to get others to do it my way (my wife for instance...she has her own way, as backwards as it might seem to me, it suits her) :) But some people might find other ways of working helpful. Like learning keyboard shortcuts. (especially Command-delete.. sure beats dragging things to the trash!)

The point being that there are many ways around OS X's limitations that don't inhibit the operation of applications.

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G4/Digital Audio/1GHz, 1 GB, Mac OS X 10.4.8 • www.david-schwab.com • www.myspace/davidschwab • www.imanicoppola.net