Leap: A More Natural Finder?
With the release of 10.5 Leopard, Apple enhanced the Finder with smart folders and Coverflow eye candy. Unfortunately, Finder is still the same old Finder when it comes to navigating through folders and finding files. Spotlight continues to improve the finding of files with its ability to index file information and content, but its display is limited, as is the ability to filter search results.
Leap, from Ironic Software, is a new Finder-like application for finding files in a more natural manor. What isn’t Leap ? First and foremost Leap is not an extension or replacement for Finder or Spotlight, but actually a utility to enable a greater depth of search when seeking out those hard to find files.
Leap presents the user with the means to locate files via a simple search dialogue, with the ability to narrow down the results by predefined tags, file types or folder names. Results are displayed in groupings of file type, keywords, known tags, folder names and dates. These groupings help the user trigger memories of where the file might be, for example: “I know it was created back in February and had something to do with accounting”. Knowing this level for detail, the user can narrow the search by date and review the folder names with some similar reference to “account“.
Folder contents are displayed in preview icon, grouped preview icon or list views. The user can enlarge or shrink the icon preview display, similar to photos in iPhoto, to see more or less files at a time. Once the desired file is located the user can perform many of the traditional Finder actions such as Open, Print, Email etc. True to the premise of Web 2.0, tagging is the means to improving future file lookup. The more files that are tagged with descriptive identifiers, the more useful Leap will become over time. This will remove the need to remember dates and folder names. Leap provides a desktop sliding shelf which, upon dragging files onto it, opens a entry window to capture multiple tags per item. Go nuts and add plenty of descriptive tags.
Leap, which requires Mac OS X 10.4.10 or later, is distributed as shareware and available for a 21-day evaluation period, after which registration costs $34.00.
I just don’t get the whole ‘tagging’ thing that’s sprung up in the last few years. I don’t mind a small number of category type concepts, but I find it unnatural and incredibly messy to have so many tags that you actually have to resize their names to make out the popular ones.
I’d much rather keep a nice real hierarchy, with links, smart folders and searches providing for situations where a file suits multiple choices. But maybe that’s just because it’s what I’m used to.
[...] review of Leap up on MacApper [...]
I don’t mind Leap, and actually used it for a while recently — well 21 days to be exact. If you work with graphics and have a million images on your media drive it can be great for that…I agree also that the tagging is a bit of a chore, but if you actually do it, the results are worth it. I think my biggest gripe is just the $34 price tag. Do I hear giveaway?!
Tagging your existing media can be quite a daunting chore, but the results are well with it.
I’ve come to love tagging, actually, ever since Gmail forced it upon me – it’s like having folders, but instead of restricting each file to a single location in a single file, you can intuitively place as many tags on a file/ email as you want – so (theoretically) you can use any one of the tags you placed on the original file to find it later.
I admit I haven’t gotten a proper system worked out yet, and end up either overtagging files (meaning they end up appearing too often during searches) or tagging them inconsistently (leading to futile searches later). But it’s got a lot of potential.
I echo MikeH’s call for Giveaway! Giveaway! Or at least a steep discount.
There IS a free alternative…stay tuned
[...] elegance of Punakea’s tagging solution. And the best news is that, unlike its competition, Leap, it’s completely free. Now that you know the magic word, go pick up your copy of the wand [...]
Leap is rather cool. I bought Yep [Leap's older brother for pdfs only - really useful, automatic tagging for 1000s of files] too late to get Leap for free, so I’m still not sure if I’ll buy it.
The interface is still too mouse-driven, more than iTunes e.g.
BUT: you still can’t buy it. The 21 days are the maximum for each beta version.
So, in January I got stuck in-between two betas… the next one wasn’t released after the expiration of the “prolonged period” or whatever. I realized two things then: Leap could be a perfect tool but you shouldn’t rely on its beta version. By now, it largely dropped out of use for me.
Most beta testers seem to have bought Yep early enough.