I’d like to propose a rule that all the Finder bashers in this thread accompany their complaint with at least one concrete example.

I’m no Apple fanboy, but blind hate is just as bad as blind love, and so far 100% of the specifics brought up have turned out to be people who just don’t have a basic familiarity with the software. I genuinely don’t begrudge a person sticking to what they know, but it’s a point towards what’s good for you and maybe whether it’s intuitive, not towards whether Finder is objectively good or lacks features. I’d be happy to read both real issues and people learning more about Finder, but just “Finder sucks” doesn’t help anybody.

The keybindings (and lack of documentation for them) in Finder sucks, having to google how to show hidden files in a save dialogue every time I have to do it sucks, having to search through the UI every time for the non-obvious way to get to a specific path sucks. Do I need to mention .DS_Store?

There are loads of different file managers for many different operating systems, they look and act the way they do from years of refining UX in response to the way users actually interact with them. This is why the file manager on my android phone is so similar to the one on my windows machine, and my linux install. All of them are different to Finder which appeared to lock some UX decisions in circa 1990 and then refuse to budge, this is why Finder sucks.

It's the one OS where file and folder manipulation via the terminal is actually sometimes faster for me, no need to go digging for the specific ritual Finder uses in opposition to every other file manager to do the task.

I think frustrating is the most appropriate word. Finder is great if my files are organized and I know exactly where something is. My concrete one... The save dialog opens where it was last, so files land in places I didn’t choose, and nothing in Finder or Spotlight helps me later unless I remember the name or the contents.