When on macOS using Finder I often wish I had something as nice and consistent and usable as Nautilus.

Finder is genuinely horrible. It’s obvious no one at Apple cares about files anymore nor anyone working with them.

We’re all supposed to consume cloud these days or so it seems.

My go to example would be long lasting issues with SMB support in Finder. All operations are very slow, the search is almost unusably so. The operations that are instant on every non-Apple device take ages on a Mac. I first ran into these issues 7 years ago when I set up my NAS, and they present to this day. I tried all random suggestions and terminal commands, but eventually gave up on trying to make it perform as it does on Linux.

With Apple's focus on cloud services, fixing the bugs that prevent the user from working with their local network storage runs contrary to their financial incentives.

Is it actually though? It’s cool to criticise Nautilus but, at worst, it’s just equally as bad as Finder. Which shouldn’t be surprising given how much it’s styled to look like Finder.

However in my personal opinion Nautilus’s breadcrumb picker does edge it against Finder.

So I stand by my comment that Finder is the worst.

Nautilus opens a new window for every folder you enter. Finder does not.

That used to be a preference, and last I used it, it was not. It is forced on because that’s how the GNOME developers thought you should use it… “Our way or the highway!” — GNOME devs.

Finder wins based on that alone. Finder wins so completely because of that one single thing that I’ll never voluntarily use GNOME again.