[Nobody]

I was wondering about what the multi-threaded finder would mean for general os x usage. For example, when loading a very large movie file in column view, my finder usually freezes up compltely until it is done. The same goes for mounted servers, such as the idisk, when I browse through the files on the mounted server. Will a mult-threaded finder put an end to the freezing, so that I can load a movie in column view, navigate servers (make believe they load slowly) and navigate my hd at the same time?

[Nobody]

at best : YES

[Nobody]

That's certainly the idea behind multithreading. It's like multitasking within a single application (rather than between applications). While it may not make individual operations any faster, it should let you do other Finder things while you wait for them to finish.

Mac OS 9 has a multithreaded Finder (as does 8.5 and 8.0 to a lesser extent). When you open up a window with a lot of items or on a slow network in 9, you get the spinning arrows in the window status bar as it builds the contents, and in the meantime you can do other things.

The Finder in OS X is already somewhat multithreaded; for example, you can have a file copy in the background while you browse another folder. Apple is simply making the multithreading more pervasive through the entire thing.

[Nobody]

That is great news. One of the biggest "holes" in OS X was that the finder could easily be locked up when browsing an idisk, for example. Thanks for the replies.