Ah, the Finder just crashed
Not the words of doom they used to be.
Back under Mac OS 9, if the Finder crashed, usually it resulted in your machine locking up, you despairing hitting the three-finger salute of Command-Option-Escape and it saying “Force Quit the Finger? (Who are you fucking kidding?)”
I made up the last bit, not that any Mac OS 9 user will have noticed. I think you just mentally inserted it whenever that dread error message came up.
The Finder just crashed a few minutes ago. Because I’m using Mac OS X, all I noticed was a bunch of icons on the desktop dissapearing, some disc activity (which, thanks to Apple letting me pay for a replacement CPU and fan bundle that dispels the wind-tunnel effect, I can hear), and then the icons appearing shortly after.
Things have definitely got better in Mac world. Although not consistently better - try signing up for .Mac. The website insists that a) you should have a browser window many miles wide, because obviously you need that amount of space to type in your name; and b) reloads the page whenever you move between fields, it seems. And of course that resets the focus, so you end up adding your credit card number to your name, which is worrying as hell.