The Death of Folders?

saintlupus writes "There's an interesting article on Wired about the interface changes in Tiger being a precursor to the demise of the classic folder-browsing Finder." From the article: "Users type search queries more or less as they did pre-Tiger, but 'the quality, scope and presentation of the results are significantly better, so users get good benefits without having to change their behavior.'"

Comments

Microsoft has planned this for quite awhile.

[Novanix]

Microsoft purposed the death of folders back when they announced the WinFS system. The idea of an SQL or Database file system where queries are performed more often than direct references isn't new. While Microsoft is not releasing WinFS with longhorn, much of their search capabilities and ability to group files into multiple spots and 'death of folders' will still be occurring. Obviously apple is the first to give a solid attempt at implementing this, hopefully it will make organization far easier;)

Re:Microsoft has planned this for quite awhile.

[Punkrokkr]

It sounds similar to how GMail groups messages together. There are no folders, but labels that help organize your mail. I found it interesting, yet odd at first; but it's grown on me and I think I like it better.

Re:Microsoft has planned this for quite awhile.

[BioCS.Nerd]

As a GMail and Tiger user, the idea of labels in GMail is akin to Smart Folders in Tiger. And yes, I rather prefer labels and Smart Folders as time has gone on.

As an aside, I find that I still navigate through folders a lot despite extensively using Smart Folders, Spotlight and Quick Silver as I still think in terms of folders. It's probably out of habit, and probably because I'm quite the clean freak.

I have iTunes, and iPhoto organize my files even though I know I'll never look at them by pointing and clicking through folders and will almost exclusively use Spotlight or the apps themselves. I even organize my movies, and TV shows I've downloaded. However, the latter case is because it's a hassle to add in metadata. The day I can have an app visit something like iMDB and add in some keywords is the day I stop organizing those too. Hmm... I think I just figured out what my next programming project will be :)

Re:Microsoft has planned this for quite awhile.

[hackstraw]

Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I don't see how or why folders or directories should disappear.

An improved search mechanism is welcomed, but how do I associate a bunch of related files together without labeling as being together? How do I move or copy something that is now relevant together with the other files?

Lets say I'm working with research on penguins. I'll have jpeg images, url's, word documents, etc. And I'll put them in "My penguins" folder (exclude the My if your on longhorn:).

I can archive "My Penguins", I can throw the whole thing in the trash if I'm sick of penguins.

What I guess I'm getting at, is that folders or directories are convenient for organizational purposes. Another thing, is with no folders, how do you share a folder? Do I have to add metadata to each file saying who, when and why I want that document shared over the network?

Even since searching has become so good with google, the web is still put into "folders" by different websites. If I'm looking to buy something and I do a search, by seeing that the domain ends in .uk, I will not go there since its not worth paying to convert to pounds and pay for shipping across the Atlantic for a $20 item.

If I'm looking into "folder elimination research" on google, I can see that Microsoft's website may have an entry, or slashdot may have an entry, and I'm already starting to form opinions about the content based on who is hosting it.

So, are libraries doing it all wrong too? Those bozo's put all the related books together in one building. With a small rfid tag I could search on the computer and be able to find any book even if its not on the shelf where it is supposed to be. I dunno, I've found great books about something I was interested in because they were all grouped together. I've found "open directories" of good stuff because they were all put together.

Seems more logical and "real life" to me.

Re:Microsoft has planned this for quite awhile.

[crawling_chaos]

I would hazard a guess that large fraction of the population is not as organized as you are. In fact, since I restore missing files from backup for my coworkers all of the time and see that they use no folders whatsoever, I know a lot of people do not organize.

A hierarchical organization system is not hard to implement optionally on top of a search based one. That way you don't have to remember if you filed your Natalie Portman pictures in the "Petrified" or "Hot Grits" folders. (I keed, I keed.)

Re:Microsoft has planned this for quite awhile.

[Feztaa]

If you use GMail, you should be familiar with the concept of "labels". Of course, it's overly simplistic for organizing files with, but it works well for emails.

Instead of trying to remember precisely which folder you saved a certain file to, you'd just have all kinds of tags on each file. So your video of penguins fishing for food could be tagged under tags like video, penguins, animals, fishing, etc. So all your videos are conveniently organized in one place, but all your *penguin stuff* is also organized in another place, even if that set overlaps.

I think it would be a more efficient way of storing things, you don't need to know exactly *where* you put it, you just need to know what it is you are looking for.

What's taking so long?

[AKAImBatman]

There's an interesting article on Wired about the interface changes in Tiger being a precursor to the demise of the classic folder-browsing Finder.

Call me when Folders become saved queries, and then we'll talk about the semi-demise of Finder. Actually, Finder wouldn't leave us at all. In a properly designed database file system, folders/directories should be replaced with standard queries. An example of this is the Labelling system in GMail. You can add a meta-data label to any email, which will then cause that email to appear in a virtual folder of the same name as the label. But if you pay attention to the search bar, you find that the folder is nothing more than a stored search on a key piece of meta-data.

This concept has massive implications for File System Usability. Under the folders-as-search concept, the same files can be organized under multiple folder groupings. This labelling data not only assists users in doing future searches for their information (i.e. A real reason to fill out meta-data other than "It might be useful."), but it also provides the user with a way of organizing ALL data for a given project under one folder without forcing the user to make a copy. It may not seem all that revolutionary, but I think you'll find that a lot of GMail users have already grasped the real power of the concept.

That being said, WHAT'S TAKING SO DAMN LONG?! This stuff was figured out 10+ years ago, and pieces of it were even included in BeOS. NTFS has had many of the necessary features since its inception (just turned off for some bloody reason), and ReiserFS is bringing the same design to Linux. So what is everyone waiting for? The next guy to scoop you on it?

*sigh* Dear Mr. Jobs: Will you please demonstrate to everyone how you do this properly with a file system? Thanks. Kudos to your NeXT development team who's made this possible.

Re:What's taking so long?

[BShive]

It's already here. It says right in the article that "[...] Tiger's Smart Folders feature, which lets the user save the results of a Spotlight search as a virtual folder that automatically updates as new items matching the search are added to the system." This sounds quite similar to the smart playlists in iTunes eh? I use the smart playlists in iTunes quite a lot, and I'll definitely be using this smart folder feature once I get Tiger.

Re:What's taking so long?

[platos_beard]

Call me when Folders become saved queries...

Did you read the article? That's exactly what SmartFolders are. You save query results as a SmartFolder and it updates itself whenever new matches are found.

Re:What's taking so long?

[AKAImBatman]

Thanks. I misunderstood what Smart Folders were. This just further underscores that Apple is the only company willing to take risks to offer useful features to their customers. I'm not quite sure what makes Wired think that Finder and Smart Folders are somehow diametric. The two are actually perfectly matched. Finder allows you to browser all the folders on your system. It's good at that. If the folders just happen to be saved queries, who really cares? The interface still works. It's just boggles my mind that no other OS has latched onto this concept before now, despite the overwhelming evidence that it's A Good Idea(TM).

Now that Apple's shown everyone the way with database filesystems, I wonder if we could get them to replace the "Recent" menu with "Piles" of recent folders. Wait, they're already looking at that. God, I love this new Apple. (i.e. NeXT renamed.) And that's coming from a guy who's hated Apple his entire life!

Re:What's taking so long?

[doublem]

Will you please demonstrate to everyone how you do this properly with a file system?

Great. Grand.

Now, let's take this into the work place, where you have 300 users and a central server. How do the users know they're working off the "official" version of the file from the server? How do they know they're not reading a version they accidentally saved on their own machine? You can legitimately ask how they know this now, and I'll respond that when dealing with stupid users, but a valid file path is very useful.

What happens when a user makes a typo when entering meta data for associating files with a project? Suddenly you have all but one of the files you need come up in your search, when you could have just saved all of them to the same folder.

This idea hasn't caught on because it would screw over corporate IT data management with no real gain. It would be confusing and far too complex for the average user. Forcing the "Directory" premise on users is a far better solution. While it does require users to * gasp * LEARN something, you have to have at least a baseline to accomplish anything.

This is just more of Apple introducing ideas that will make actual work more difficult in the interest of letting increasingly stupid users write letters, pirate MP3s and surf for porn.

Apple is doing to computing what Ford would be doing to the roads if they convinced the government to abolish the legal requirement for a Drivers' License, while making cars controlled by a single joystick.

Re:What's taking so long?

[Nasarius]

The reason the file/folder method worked so well is because it's a good abstraction from the real world model.

Well no, not really. Back in the good old days, "folders" were called directories. Microsoft just stuck pretty icons on them and called them folders. Directories work because they're simple, for both users and programmers. Regardless of real-world metaphors, it's easy to understand a simple hierarchy.

Re:What's taking so long?

[AKAImBatman]

It's easier than you think, actually. When it comes down to it, the primary difference a user will see between a Folder and a Label is that Folders can only hold a file once, while Labels can hold the same file multiple times. i.e. The concept just pushes existing abstractions just a bit farther.

File links have always been a sort of "hack" to get around that fact that files can only be in one folder at any given time. With a database file system, you can keep the one folder per file metaphor, or you can grow into the folders as metadata concept. Your choice.

The greatest danger in Desktop metaphors has always been that the metaphor will be taken to its fully restrictive extreme, and that the powers added by the computer will be ignored. That's exactly what's happened in this case, and it's not a good thing.

Maybe I should blog something more complete about this...

Re:What's taking so long?

[Dorothy 86]

This is kinda how Quicksilver does this with pre-10.4 (Not having 10.4 I can't talk about how quicksilver interacts with spotlight et al). It didn't matter where anything was, particularly, you just type in the name of it, and hit enter. Voila, it opens up in the approptiate program. This idea does take some getting used to, you're quite right. But I think after people try it for a couple of days, then they'll realize that the database (or catalog as far as QS goes) model is vastly more efficient. Rather than having to remember where you put that file you use twice a quarter, you can just type it in, and there you have it. No hunting, no guessing, it's there when you need it and that's what's important.

Re:What's taking so long?

[AKAImBatman]

Now, let's take this into the work place, where you have 300 users and a central server. How do the users know they're working off the "official" version of the file from the server?

They should show up as different devices. i.e. I have a repository over here on the server, and over here on the desktop. This is pretty straightforward on OS X. More complex solutions in the future (which would pose some issues) could allow administrators to force all user files onto the network, then keep a "cache" of the files on the local machine for travelling laptops. (Windows has a similar feature now.)

What happens when a user makes a typo when entering meta data for associating files with a project?

Not a GMail user I assume? Look, Labels work just like folders. You create it, it looks like a folder, walks like a folder, talks like a folder, and quacks like a folder. Therefore it's a duck^H^H I mean... Folder. The primary difference between the Label and Folder is that you can have documents under multiple Labels. Links, as we use them today, are just a workaround to make up for this missing metaphor.

This is just more of Apple introducing ideas that will make actual work more difficult in the interest of letting increasingly stupid users write letters, pirate MP3s and surf for porn.

I can only assume that you've never actually USED an Apple. Because I get far more work done on my Apple than I ever do on my PC. Or perhaps you'd like to explain how ubiquitous spell checkers, applications as a file, built-in Java, files getting saved properly even if moved, automatic file associations, Expose, and a billion other USEFUL features for getting work done are only targetted at Pirates and Pr0n lovers?

Re:What's taking so long?

[jcostantino]

I agree. We do campground site maps here with advertising inserts. The folder structure is very specific with a folder for the job, a subfolder for ad graphics, another subfolder for the layout and another subfolder for the maps. The jobs can be anywhere between 10 megs and a gig depending on the job. Dozens to hundreds of pictures (bmp, eps, tiff, etc), Indesign or Pagemaker layouts, Illustrator maps, etc. It would be chaos if an advertiser logo was out of place because that would crash the entire job when it went to be plated.

I like spotlight, it works well for finding documents. I don't know if I will ever get into smart folders because I like knowing that if I put something somewhere, it stays put and it doesn't rely on a particular context to be in the folder it belongs to.

I just don't think smart folders is... smart. Apple has been working towards removing the responsibility of users having to place documents in the right folders by rolling up all the file save dialogs by default and I guess this is the logical extension of that.

Re:What's taking so long?

[DickBreath]

making meta data searchable on a hard disk is not an easy task without making the metadata you want to search a permanent part of the FS design. I think the idea here is to have any abount of metadata (within reason), of varying sizes, and searchable fast. That's not easy.

I believe that both ReiserFS and NTFS allow you to attach unlimited metadata named attributes to any file. In fact, an attribute's "value" could be much larger than the actual "file" it is attached to.

Imagine if every graphic could have a "thumbnail" attribute attached to its file. When the graphic is moved, the attributes (i.e. file size, date, user, permissions, thumbnail, etc.) move with it.

Of course tools such as "cp", "mv", "tar", would have to be enhanced to know about the extended attributes. You could no longer assume that the number of attributes of a file are fixed in number (i.e. name, size, date, user, permissions). You would have to loop through the available attributes of a file to know what they were.

Attribute names would have to be standardized. Everyone would have to agree that the modified date of a file is an attribute named "date". Everyone would have to agree that the thumbnail graphic is named "thumbnail". (Even PDF, or OpenOffice.org documents could have a "thumbnail" attribute generated by the application.)

Do other filesystems (Ext2, Ext3, JFS, XFS) have attributes?

The kernel api's for userspace to access and manipulate the attributes of a file would have to be standardized, just as read/write calls are standardized so that tools like "cp" could copy attributes without regard to the underlying filesystem.

And finally, maybe everyone could agree that the "mimetype" attribute has the type of data within the file, and we could stop using stupid file extensions to designate the filetype. (Something that Mac OS did back in 1984.)

Re:What's taking so long?

[AKAImBatman]

You know, after you and others mentioned this, I dug into smart folders to figure out if they are the same. It doesn't appear to me that they are. In a Label type system, the Label shows up as if it were a folder. (See the GMail interface for an example.) The Label is precreated and unique, so you stamp it on files instead of having the info stored in multiple files. A bit like SQL keys.

If I understand Smart Folders, they only group based on a search of existing Meta-Data. It doesn't sound like there's any way to pretend like you're adding a file to a psuedo-folder. If that's the case, then Smart Folders is still a broken metaphor that needs to be expanded.

Re:What's taking so long?

[jdwest]

You'll be pleased to know that QS is still "required" for 10.4x, as Spotlight for an app launcher doesn't work as well for that. Of course, Spotlight was not designed to be an app launcher, either.
I do find that they complement each other quite nicely.

Re:What's taking so long?

[Paradox]

The folder structure is very specific with a folder for the job, a subfolder for ad graphics, another subfolder for the layout and another subfolder for the maps. The jobs can be anywhere between 10 megs and a gig depending on the job. Dozens to hundreds of pictures (bmp, eps, tiff, etc), Indesign or Pagemaker layouts, Illustrator maps, etc. It would be chaos if an advertiser logo was out of place because that would crash the entire job when it went to be plated.

But, that's because you work around folders. It's not because folders are inherently superior or necessary to do this kind of work.

Imagine if every project had a tag, like, "USPS Job". Then, some files would have type tags like, "com.adobe.illustrator". You wouldn't visualize it as a flat space, of course. It might still look like the finder, sorta.

But it's tough to imagine, because spotlight doesn't yet have enough muscle and backup to pull it off. We're still few years out on that. Apple is positioning themselves for that, it seems, but they know they're not ready. Right now, Spotlight just lets you make new views of your data, in an ad hoc and semi-permanent fashion.

Re:What's taking so long?

[larry bagina]

NTFS has streams, (eg homework.doc:date, homework.doc:subject, etc), but the support is only half there -- you can create them, read them, write them, but there isn't a nice way to query them (there isn't even an api to directly find out which streams exist for a file).

HFS+ has the resource fork (which is structured data) but it also now allows arbitrary metadata as well, though that's only recently been available and so it's not yet well used.

Re:What's taking so long?

[Lagged2Death]

for home users, it'll take a LOT longer to explain "directories" than just a file/folder comparison and a file cabinet. Easy simple stuff you take for granted will often confuse the begeezis out of regular people.

That's absolutely true.

I think maybe a database filesystem - with the right interface - could be easier for these people. Yet it might also be more confusing for someone (like me) who's been using directories to organize everything for 20+ years.

Re:What's taking so long?

[Gulthek]

How are GMail's labels not metadata again?

Smart folders go off of arbitary metadata. I use spotlight comments in much the same way I use gmail labels. Some file belongs to a particular group? Add a keyword (label) to it to indicate that.

I am going folderless as we speak. Look back in my comment history for a long post about how spotlight and smart folders have changed my computer use for the better.

Re:What's taking so long?

[Gulthek]

I use spotlight as an app launcher and it works very well. Type in a few characters of the app name and then hit command+enter. Command pops the selection down to the top hit, which is always the app for me.

I trimmed my dock down to almost nothing thanks to this.

No, I never liked QS. I don't know why either.

Re:What's taking so long?

[jcostantino]

I can understand your point but it seems as though the "desktop metaphor" goes from "files in folders, folders in drawers, drawers in cabinets" to "my secretary knows where everything is and if she ever decides to leave, I'm screwed."

Also, I can see something as a database-driven desktop where a "folder" is merely a script that places an attribute on any items dropped onto it and then if you want the particular files associated with that "folder" you would just open it.

Except for the possibility of having files with the potential of living in different folders at the same time due to multiple attributes, isn't that what current allocation table file systems do? I would wager that a SQL query would be faster than a normal file system query but unless we're talking about a huge number of files is there a time savings? There would be a space savings due to one database tracking files instead of two, that's for sure.

Re:What's taking so long?

[AKAImBatman]

I can't imagine a reasonable way to use Gmail style labels in an office environment. I'd hat to have to sort through 600 possible labels to select the right one from a drop down list.

Here's a thought: Don't use a dropdown list. Are dropdowns used to select folders today? No, a directory list is. Make it a label list, and you're gold.

And where are these labels stored anyway? On the server?

Where are folders stored anyway?

What happens when a user upgrades machines? Has to use another computer? Has to tell another employee how to find the group of files she carefully constructed?

What happens to your file system when you upgrade a machine? When you have to use another computer? Has to tell another employee how to find the group of files under labels she carefully constructed?

How does one do a reasonable data only backup in such a mess?

How does one do a reasonable backup of the mess we call hard drives?

I'm sorry, but this notion is destructive in a business environment. It's designed to make users lazy and sloppy about where they keep their data.

I'm sorry, but the only thing lazy and sloppy is your attention. What is a folder? An INode with files linked to it. What is a Label? A unique file system identity with files linked to it. What's the difference? A label can be linked to documents that other labels are linked to. Did you even catch the part about Links == Psuedo-Label functionality to cover the missing holes?

I don't understand why you're so hostile here. There's nothing new except a bit more functionality that makes things work better. Files without labels are nothing more than files stored in a root folder. (Also analogous to Google's All Email.) And separate storage devices are separate storage devices, are separate storage devices. You don't complain that mapped drives "make a huge mess that is impossible to manage" do you? So don't act like a dope about this.

Re:What's taking so long?

[atomm1024]

(Um, actually, Apple stuck pretty icons on them and called them folders. And Xerox PARC probably did before Apple. Microsoft just reused a symbolism that was already in wide use.)

It's certainly easy to understand a simple hierarchy. In fact, real-world metaphors seem to confuse some people more than unique terms would. For example, my dad has been using computers for 7 years, and he doesn't understand the difference between "windows," "folders," "icons," "files," "aliases," "menus," etc. He uses them all interchangeably. I seriously doubt that he's an isolated case, and let me just say that this makes it really hard to help him troubleshoot over the phone...

Re:What's taking so long?

[AKAImBatman]

This can be troublesome if you work with files that are highly related. "Did I file that bill from the University under 'Finance' or under 'School'?

Under a stored query system (i.e. Labels), you could place the bill under *both* University and Finance. That's why labelling makes more sense than folders. :-)

Re:What's taking so long?

[AKAImBatman]

Someone else mentioned comments, and they do sound like they fit the bill. The only catch to watch out for is that the comments are actually linked to by the file, and not just applied as free text. The reason for this, is that if I change the text of the comment, it should get changed across all files. If it doesn't, then we have a problem. :-)

Re:What's taking so long?

[Jasin Natael]

Actually, that's mostly true. If you'd been using Apple's Folder concept (where windows remember where they are on screen, icons stay where you put them, and each folder opens in a new window), it would have been intuitive from the beginning.

Navigating an OS through a CLI or Windows/Linux's file browsers is a huge mental burden compared to using your brain's eye-hand coordination features to browse a filesystem. Without the afrementioned principles being completely and consistently applied, the physical metaphor breaks down and it's no easier than navigating through a CLI (save that you don't have to type ls...). People who used the Apple system for years had a major break when OSX started implementing "progressive" features, esp. the 3-pane view, and couldn't figure out where their productivity went. They were getting distracted during the file-browsing process because of the mental effort that had to be expended to find the files! Hardcore *NIX and Windows geeks have built-up the mental muscle to navigate filesystems with ease, but remember that, for most, this is a very difficult skill to learn. Most Joe Users couldn't tell you what folders their most important files are in, and just put shortcuts to everything on their desktop or in a menu. God forbid they need a file that's not on their shortcut menu or desktop.

That's why home users have had such a difficult time grasping the files/folders concept all along -- on Windows, they never really behaved like real folders and files. Now, with "smart" folders, we're finally getting the computer to do something oranizationally that couldn't have been done in the real world. And this time it looks like it's worth breaking the desktop metaphor. All preliminary reports are that Tiger's Spotlight has made people more productive...

Jasin Natael

The Death of Folders?

[Anonymous Coward]

Long live the directory!

Hmm....

[TechnoLust]

That's funny, I thought Gmail's labels system was supposed to be the death of folders.

Re:Hmm....

[WIAKywbfatw]

I'm an avid and early Gmail user but I think it's only fair to point out that Gmail borrowed the folderless labelling system that it uses from Opera's M2 mail client.

As far as email is concerned, labels are an Opera innovation (unless, of course, someone can provide an earlier example), not a Gmail one.

Folders?!?

[coop0030]

I just put everything in the C:\ drive and know that I can find it using Windows XP's sweet search capabilities!

err...yea...

Re:Folders?!?

[MarkByers]

Yes that's a great idea... let me just set up my web files all in one folder...

Do you want to overwrite 'c:\index.html' (size 4509 bytes) with 'c:\index.html' (size 16735 bytes)?

Hmmm... there's still a few technical issues remaining. I think folders will be with us for a while longer ;)

Re:Folders?!?

[lpangelrob2]

You can just name them 'c:\index~1.htm' thru 'c:\ind~9999.htm', of course.

Call it a toast to the benefits of the initial Windows 95 file naming scheme. :-)

Figures.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

The only shocking part is that there will be millions of people that have been using computers since the 1980s, who never noticed that there ever was such a thing as folders/directories.

I'm sorry, but I like to categorize things. I like to know where they are, in this logical space. If this loses a document, can you dig it out? Or did it just never exist?

Re:Figures.

[lp-habu]

Anyone think that I put all this stuff on this file by hand:

habu:~/Movies larry$ mdls 1984macintro.mov
1984macintro.mov -------------
kMDItemAttributeChangeDate = 2005-05-06 18:10:34 -0400
kMDItemAudioBitRate = 47808
kMDItemAudioChannelCount = 1
kMDItemAuthors = ("TextLab text+media Production")
kMDItemCodecs = ("Sorenson Video 3", "QDesign Music 2")
kMDItemContentCreationDate = 2005-01-25 14:26:09 -0500
kMDItemContentModificationDate = 2005-01-25 14:26:10 -0500
kMDItemContentType = "com.apple.quicktime-movie"
kMDItemContentTypeTree = (
"com.apple.quicktime-movie",
"public.movie",
"public.audiovisual-content",
"public.data",
"public.item",
"public.content"
)
kMDItemCopyright = "Apple Computer"
kMDItemDisplayName = "1984macintro.mov"
kMDItemDurationSeconds = 288.32
kMDItemFSContentChangeDate = 2005-01-25 14:26:10 -0500
kMDItemFSCreationDate = 2005-01-25 14:26:09 -0500
kMDItemFSCreatorCode = 1414942532
kMDItemFSFinderFlags = 0
kMDItemFSInvisible = 0
kMDItemFSLabel = 0
kMDItemFSName = "1984macintro.mov"
kMDItemFSNodeCount = 0
kMDItemFSOwnerGroupID = 20
kMDItemFSOwnerUserID = 1262
kMDItemFSSize = 21939485
kMDItemFSTypeCode = 1299148630
kMDItemID = 8069832
kMDItemKind = "QuickTime Movie"
kMDItemLastUsedDate = 2005-01-25 14:26:10 -0500
kMDItemMediaTypes = (Video, Sound)
kMDItemPixelHeight = 240
kMDItemPixelWidth = 320
kMDItemStreamable = 0
kMDItemTitle = "Apple 1984 - The Macintosh"
kMDItemTotalBitRate = 607208
kMDItemUsedDates = (2005-01-25 14:26:10 -0500)
kMDItemVideoBitRate = 559400
habu:~/Movies larry$

Note that every one of those keys is searchable (not directly from Spotlight, but from the search function or the command line).

Re:Figures.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

You do like some of the data I've seen on numerous user systems. I once saw a mac powerbook used by a salesman that had folders nested 25+ folders deep. Can't remember the exact count, but my understanding of HFS is that it can't be as high as I remember!

He'd have a folder named October1998, with files in it from April 2001, with another folder in it called 1997, that had a folder in it call May 1999, and so on. It was unbelievable. I was migrating the thing to a T20 with win2k, and as I remember, I ended up having to break up his folder tree quite a bit to even make it fit. NTFS5 wouldn't take it as is no matter what tool was used. Had to fill out paperwork documenting that I couldn't be 100% certain that all documents were migrated successully. Was the only one like that, out of 3500 or so.

Bull

[thesupermikey]

What a load of Bullshit

Spotlight is really good, but that hasnt stoped me from being anal about setting up files so i can find things.

What really pisses me off is out iTunes reognized all my music when it was inported into the libary. I spent years putting together music in such a way that i can find it. Now i have the seach for it b/c itunes had to mess things up.

Re:Bull

[SpeedyG5]

I am sure you prefer to organize your music by the weight of the lead singer(Like I do) instead of Artist and Album. Its a shame that you didn't notice the "don't organize my music" preference in iTunes.

Re:Bull

[hexix]

This advice is probably too late for you, but you can actually tell iTunes not to reorganize your music folder in the preferences.

I agree this seems like a stupid thing to have turned on by default. I also find the behavior where it copies mp3s that you play to the music folder automatically strange. But I guess some people would get confused that deleting a file from their desktop makes it not playable in itunes anymore. *shrug*

Re:Bull

[TheRaven64]

Actually, I've had the exact opposite experience. iTunes is very good at organising my music - I used to do this all myself, but now I rely almost 100% on smart playlists. Spotlight, however, is a pain. I can usually find a file on my system faster using The Finder than using Spotlight. Why? Because:

1. Typed queries are a pain in Spotlight. There is a lot of typed meta-data I could search, but the UI for creating a typed query is dire.
2. It doesn't search most of my FS. Spotlight indexes little more than my home directory, and I know where everything is in there. When I want to find something outside there, it is useless.
3. I can't construct simple boolean queries - they are all in CNF or DNF. How hard would it have been to create a UI that let me find all PDFs containing Apple but not AppleWorks, for example?

On the other hand, I do organise my mail, and still find it easier to search that using a find function than manually (although I can usually make the searches go faster by limiting them to the most probable folder - important when I have almost a 1GB mail spool.

Re:Bull

[kisielk]

...Because it's really hard to select all the songs, with all variants of the names.. go in to properties, and change them all to a common name.

Give me a break, fixing minor problems like this take s seconds in iTunes. Not to mention iTunes autocompletes fields for you in the properties to prevent exactly these kinds of mis-labeling problems.

Re:Bull

[BorgCopyeditor]

I also find the behavior where it copies mp3s that you play to the music folder automatically strange. But I guess some people would get confused that deleting a file from their desktop makes it not playable in itunes anymore.

This suggests that people are thinking of iTunes as a place "where" music files exist.

Re:Bull

[kfg]

Computers are good at organizing data.

And here lies the root of problem. People think this is true, and it's arrant nonsense. Computers are absolutely worthless at organizing data. All they can do it process instructions for organization.

The organization itself derives from, and can only derive from a human mind. Thinking "the computer organizes the data" is the main reason why virtually all databases are giant Mongolian cluster fucks.

When you run a program that "organizes the data for you" what you are really doing is imposing someone else's idea of how your data should be organized on your data.

When people ask me how they should organize their data I like to answer honestly:

"How the hell should I know?"

Until know about their data, what it is, what it "means" and how it is expected to used I can reorganize it a billion different ways without in any way organizing it in any useful fashion.

Organization is a state of mind and for a database to be useful you must transfer the state of your mind to the "business model" of database managment system.

Just like you do when you arrange your folders in a heirarchy.

KFG

Re:Bull

[singularity]

I consider myself quite a geek, and more of a power-user type.

That said, I let iTunes do its own thing. I *never* go into the iTunes Library folder (where the actual files are stored). I do all of my organization from within iTunes.

The problem comes from people that want to use two different interfaces (the Finder and iTunes) to manage music. iTunes does this really well. If I want to delete a song, I delete it from within iTunes. iTunes asks if I want to delete the original file.

If I want a copy of a song, I just drag it from iTunes onto the Desktop. Instant copy. Any other organization is done with playlists, smart playlists, and the browser.

I do not see people thinking of iTunes as where music files exist as a bad thing. This gets to the point of the original article - the removal of the old file/folder paradigm. If iTunes can do everything you could possibly need to do with your song files, why would you NEED to go into the folder hierarchy and deal with the actual song files?

Re:Bull

[jayloden]

But I guess some people would get confused that deleting a file from their desktop makes it not playable in itunes anymore.

God, I wish you were wrong, I really do.

It all goes back to my constant raving that people need to be taught from the beginning how to use a computer, not how to use application X. To use a computer properly, you need to know what a file is, what a folder is, understand file sizes and disk storage, and how to use menus. These simple things are NOT that hard to understand if they are taught, but no one ever bothers to sit down and teach people these simple things. Instead, they teach them how to use Microsoft Word - and you get classes full of people who can only do things ONE way in ONE application. Move that menu item, and they have a brain malfunction.

Anyone who has worked end-user tech support knows what I mean. People think memory means how much space is on their hard drive, they have no concept how much storage is on a CD or a floppy - witness the person trying to copy a 17mb powerpoint with a floppy disk. I've lost count how many times I've seen someone save a file and not know where they saved it because they don't understand the save file dialog in IE.

-Jay

Re:Bull

[Fahrvergnuugen]

I was in the same boat when I first installed iTunes. I had spent hours organizing my music files into Genre -> Artist -> Album -> (Track) Song.mp3 format.

I began to panic when I saw iTunes "Processing..." and heard my hard drive grinding.

But then it occurred to me, iTunes had done in a few minutes what had taken me countless hours to do by hand. I can find my music in iTunes 10x faster than I can using the Finder / Explorer - so what was I worried about?

If I actually need the physical file for something, I search for it in iTunes and then hit command-R and it pops a finder window open with the file selected - no file / folder browsing required.

iTunes was Spotlight for music files. Shortly thereafter I was wishing that I could find any file as easily as I can find a song file using iTunes. A few years later, we have Spotlight :)

Re:Bull

[aclarke]

Well, different strokes and all that, but I guess that's why iTunes provides the option of not moving and renaming music files.

Back in the day I had a laboriously and anally categorized music folder hierarchy. Coming from Windows and Linux to OS X about a year and a half ago I felt like I needed to keep a tight control on how my files were organized. After having my powerbook for a couple months though, I just decided "screw it" and let iTunes have its way with my music folder. Honestly, things have been much easier since I just decided to let Mac OS X do what it wants to do. I feel less stress and frustration about setting things up "just so", because the computer does as good of a job as I could 95% of the time for 5% of the hassle of doing it myself. That seems like a good tradeoff to me.

And I can still do things like move my music collection to my external folder with a symlink. And you can of course do the same if there's a music file you want in some other folder (or whatever your preferred file retrieval metaphor may be).

So I say, jump off the cliff and abandon yourself to the whim of Apple, and let Steve catch you safely below in his turtleneck-bedecked arms. Or whatever.

Only faster if you don't know...

[toupsie]

If you have your work organized in a defined folder structure, your memory will be faster than any Spotlight search -- especially given Spotlight's annoying habit of searching before you complete the search term.

This on it's face looks pretty good.

[cmefford]

But the very concept of having millions of files just scattered about in a completely flat heirarchy, well, doesn't seem like a really good way to handle your company's data.

Re:This on it's face looks pretty good.

[calibanDNS]

It could also result in nightmares when trying to refer co-workers to documents that exist in a shared location. By forcing everyone in a work group to conform to a well-defined structure on file servers you can help to ensure that everyone knows the appropriate way to share documents with team members (by using previously specified directories).

I think that Smart Folders already provide a lot of functionality, have great potential, and are a good way to organize your personal collection of files. However, I don't think that the concept is advanced enough yet to be applied to shared file repositories like a corporate or division file server.

Re:This on it's face looks pretty good.

[Tackhead]

> > But the very concept of having millions of files just scattered about in a completely flat heirarchy, well, doesn't seem like a really good way to handle your company's data.
>
>Why not? With Smart Folders it allows EVERYONE with access to that location to sort that data in their own personal way, rather than one person forcing their filing method on everyone else.

Because you are not a unique and beautiful snowflake.

And because, contrary to what they teach in public schools these days, the filesystem on your employer's fileserver was not installed for the purposes of protecting your self esteem.

I don't think so...

[Saganaga]

In other news, it was recently announced that due to the widespread use of email, street addresses would soon become obsolete. Out with the antiquated, in with the new!

Not quite yet

[turg]

From the article: "The way Searchlight transforms the computing experience is akin to Google's effect on the web"

And Google has made bookmarks obsolete, right? So Searchlight will make folders obsolete.

Better search is always very cool. But proper organization and categorization is better yet. The problem is not that the latter is a bad system but that people don't do it very well. I think a system that helps people organize their stuff will be even better than a better search. The "labels" which are used instead of folders in gmail seem like a step in that direction.

My File Search

[LegendOfLink]

I'm still waiting for the time when I can "see" the computer code, via a green monitor that displays a shower of code. Then, I will have a plug that connects to my spinal column and allows me to "enter" the computer and manipulate the code using my brainwaves.

It'd be very efficient, I could then just think of finding a file, and there it would be. Or better yet, I could imagine a beowul...NO CARRIER

Folders good for backups

[rice0067]

While I love the idea of a decent search system, the time honored forlder hierarchy works because thats how people think. For instance, pictures. For these meta based search systems each picture needs to have a comment attatched (if not searching by date).. and who really does that? I tried adding notes to my pics in iphoto but after a while it gets tiresome.

And backups.. in a workflow.. every project has its own file and subfolders, makes it easy for backup and finding files.

Anywho... folder hierarchy works great and is here to stay for most people. (except for those people who just save everything to the desktop.)

Re:Folders good for backups

[lawpoop]

The folder heirarchy is *one way* that people think.

We had this problem at an office I worked at a while back. We were a manufacutring borker broker, and we would get an invoice from a manufacturer that was to go a client in turn. Physically, we would put the original in the manufacturer's file, and put a photocopy in the client's folder. When we were computerizing, my manager thought that we should have copies of the scanned invoice in both the manufacturer's *and* client's folder.

I explained how much extra space this would take, and there were other documents that belonged in *several* folders. This was easily going to chew up all of our available disk space and backup in a few months. I tried to get them on a **relational database**, which stores the invoice *only once*, and cross-lists it under both the client and the manufacturer. When you do a query, either for client or manufacturer, you get the files that apply to the query arguments.

Anyway, my ideas never got traction, and AFAIK, the office is still using paper.

Re:Folders good for backups

[kerrbear]

For instance, pictures. For these meta based search systems each picture needs to have a comment attatched (if not searching by date).. and who really does that? I tried adding notes to my pics in iphoto but after a while it gets tiresome.

In iPhoto you can create keywords and drag photos to the keywords. You can also create folders in the viewing window and drag photos to those. You can even make smart folders which pick photos based on existing metatdata. This is easier than making a heirarchical file system for your photos and it works with Spotlight. I think the idea that applications should allow drag&drop assignment of metadata to their files is a pretty decent idea and beats having to set up directories.

Folders may die, but what about directories?

[Jay Maynard]

The idea of a folder as a visual reference for a directory may well be on the way out. There's still plenty of need for directories and hierarchical organization, though, for managing the contents of a system from the standpoint of software. OS X's Unix base is pretty heavily dependent on the basic Unix filesystem structure, and lots of software is built with a deeply ingrained assumption that it's there and the way files are organized.

Spotlight is great for users, but there will be a need for something like the Finder indefinitely.

Re:Folders may die, but what about directories?

[calibanDNS]

Just because the software needs to store and look at the files in a hierarchical way doesn't mean the the user has to see it in the same way. Computers are very good at transforming data from one view to another. The challenge, of course, is finding a view that is easy for the average user to grasp.

Removable media

[MacFury]

I must admit, I really like Tiger's Spotlight. It has improved file management on my machine considerably.

Having said that, how can this apply to removable media? I would like to see a feature on the next MacOS that automatically indexes removable storage.

Let's say I burn a CD of some data. The finder should keep track of which files I burned to that CD, long after I erased the actual files from my hard drive. That way, I can perform spotlight searchs on my data, even if it really isn't present on my local drive.

Find the file that you want and the machine prompts you to insert the proper CD.

Re:Removable media

[hexix]

So it can tell you that you burned the thing your searching for to a CD at some point in your life? How exactly do you expect it to prompt you for the proper CD?

"Please insert the CD on which you wrote "MY NUDIE PICS' in blue marker."

Misread

[dsginter]

I read this as the death of Folgers. I almost fained since Folgers is The Best Part of Wakin' Up(TM).

Re:Misread

[hunterx11]

We've replaced his traditional hierarchical filesystem with Folgers Crystals. Let's see if he notices.

Not broken

[DogDude]

What I'm wondering is what is broken with the whole directory/folder design? I wasn't aware that there was a problem. And what's the alternative... every file is stored on the hard drive in some arbitrary location, and a query is needed for each and every file access? That seems like a *ton* of overhead to fix a problem that just doesn't exist.

And what about file systems? I know that modern file systems like NTFS are much better at optimizing file storage for large drives with millions of discrete files, but are all of the modern ones ready to handle a drive with millions of files all at root?

Re:Not broken

[Monkelectric]

What I'm wondering is what is broken with the whole directory/folder design? I wasn't aware that there was a problem. And what's the alternative... every file is stored on the hard drive in some arbitrary location, and a query is needed for each and every file access? That seems like a *ton* of overhead to fix a problem that just doesn't exist.

Nothing is broken at all. This is just their latest idea to force an upgrade cycle. Filesystems like reiserfs can easily handle millions of files in a directory. I put 100k+ files in a directory in a regular basis and experience no slowdown.

What I've heard described as the database filesystem idea (and keep in mind filesystems are the most simple type of database) was that instead of really having concrete folders you would just query the system, say somethign like, "gimme all the word documents written by sally" ... Or, show me all the files I worked on yesterday ... That could actually be a bit handy, but turning your OS into a database server seems like a great way to slow down your machine for no good reason.

So I mean, do you *REALLY* need that? I could care less personaly. I keep my files well organized in my home directory/my documents ... seems like a much better solution.

Re:Not broken

[smithmc]

What I'm wondering is what is broken with the whole directory/folder design?

What's broken about it is that a single hierarchical classification scheme may not always be appropriate for a given body of data. Suppose I have a whole bunch of documents. They're all about different products - ProductA, ProductB, etc. Meanwhile, some of them are proposals, some are degisn docs, some are marketing literature, etc. I want to be able to sift through these documents in various ways. What's the best hierarchy to use? Product type first, then document type (proposal/design/etc)? Or the other way around? What happens when I want "all proposals on ProductA or ProductC for North American markets"? Where in the hierarchy do I look? Meanwhile, if each file were in a database, with search keywords, I could find anything I wanted just as easily as anything else - there's no predetermined hierarchy that makes it easier to find some things than others.

Re:Not broken

[Dixie_Flatline]

I'm spending a lot more time replying to these posts than I should. Still, I can't let them slip. :)

A study was published just last year about how the desktop paradigm breaks down when a lot of files are trying to be stored. There's nothing wrong with the folder system from a technical standpoint. The problem comes when you have hundreds or thousands of files that need to be sorted and then found. Your capacity to remember such things is finite. If you know even vaguely what you're looking for ("Hmmm, it was about 2 weeks ago, I think it mentioned nintendo, and James may have written it..."), it's probably easier to find by searching than by trying to figure out if you filed it under James, Nintendo, or the documents that you got 2 weeks ago.

If you'd like to read the study, try and get your hands on the ACM Transactions on Human-Computer Interfaces, June 2004, Volume 11, Number 2. It's quite interesting; a lot less dry than most papers. :)

Re:Not broken

[rsborg]

What I'm wondering is what is broken with the whole directory/folder design?

Simple: the same problems with hierarchical/network databases back in the 70s. When relational concepts came into play, they significantly increased the accessibility of the information. And the beauty of the relational approach is that the old hierarchical structure can be emulated (with some enhancements).

I wasn't aware that there was a problem. And what's the alternative... every file is stored on the hard drive in some arbitrary location, and a query is needed for each and every file access? That seems like a *ton* of overhead to fix a problem that just doesn't exist.

Guess what? You already do this.. do you think the data on the drive is organized into a folder hierarchy?
Hint: it's not.
You have a set of flat surfaces on which you are mapping a tree structure. It's possible to put a layer on top of this that emulates (and maintains) the tree structure.

Likewise, when you open a smart folder, you are opening a set of files with a predefined query (like "all files relating to project X") then selecting the files that appear. THis would be just like if you created a "project X" folder and maintained the hierarchy yourself.

I think what most people don't like is giving up the control of maintaining the hierarchy. They LIKE creating folders and moving files about.... the very tedium that "smart folders/labels" are designed to eliminate.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Google Desktop Search + GDSuite

[Buzz_Litebeer]

All I can say is the linking of Google Desktop Search and the program called GDSuite which makes GDS work like the "search" function from windows has already changed how I get to things on my machine. If I know a chunk of code from a certain filetype is what I am looking for, it is extremely straightforward to just type that information in and get a response immediately.

The only thing I can hope to see is for Google Desktop Search to add a "label" functionality to GDS so that I can label things that are "games" and "code" etc, to help narrow down searches or even use virtual directories where it brings up a windows like link to all executables labled for games on the hard drive without having to individually organize.

This way you could make folders that consist of multiple labels and or focus them down to less labels etc at a click of a button.

Hierarchical Folders Are Still Useful

[henrywood]

It's all very well to talk about the death of folders because of intelligent indexing and searching of file systems, but this is in the context of retrieving data. Where a hierarchical structure is so useful is when you are saving information in the first place. It's important to remember that a hierarchy divides the file system into a number of logical namespaces.

A completely flat filesystem sounds all very well in principle, but how do you find names for all of those files? I have loads of files on my computers with the same names but in different namespaces. Or are we going to throw away filenames as well?

Death to folders/directories death to discovery.

[jellomizer]

While searching has it benefits over folder there is the time that you don't know what your are looking for, but you will know once you find it. How many of you when you were fairly new to Linux

cd /usr/bin
ls

and tried to run all the files to see what they did?

Or on MacOS take a look at all the pfiles and see what they can control and what they can't.

Or say you want to find a way to make the dock transperent and you search for Dock Transperance. While the real term that the search will find is Dock Clearness. Or that file you saved way back when you don't know the date you did it or what it is about but once you see it you know that is the one you need.

Sure I like spotlight but there are some cases where it just fails me mostly because I am absent minded.

No Folders? No thanks?

[Shadow Wrought]

Maybe dumping everything into a single area makes sense for some folks, but I shudder to think about it. I work in the legal field and every attorney and paralegal in the office saves documents in case specific folders. This becomes especially helpful when, two years after the fact, you're asked to track down some obscure brief, correspondence, or the like.

That plus there is still a large group of folks in the business world for whom computers are still fairly recent (the managers and partners who have been working since the 70's and 80's). Granted their numbers are starting to thin, but there are still a great many folks, in relatively high positions, who like the folder system because it replicates a filing cabinet- they get it. Trying to educate the entire generation on a "whole new way" of doing something "easier and faster" will frighten them off.

What's wrong with folders

[tezbobobo]

Or perhaps this is being read incorrectly (the trend, not the article). I personally quite like organising my stuff into folders. I'll often store many sources together, be they source files, or pdfs/word/htm files which are related. Folders provide a simple, heirarchical method of organising files. I don't want to have to edit metafiles and such when storing files.

Better yet, instead of the death of folders, why not something which sits alongside side, like som sort of brilliant search capability? But seriously, while its a good start - does it need to go any further than apple or google have taken it? Do we really want power to be hard to get at?

Re:What's wrong with folders

[circusboy]

I'm wondering if one could use the concept of the folder/pathname etc. as part of the metadata construction...

I agree, I separate many things by folders when they have nothing to do with each other, but if metadata application could be as 'painless' as folder picking, then I could go either way.

to a large extent, isn't this how files are stored on a disk anyway? files are at addresses, and folders,(directories) are lists of addresses. add multiple pointers(folder names, metadata) to those addresses and it seems to me that you have the concept of symlinks but in a sort of upside-down in kind of way...

perhaps rather than choosing a single folder, you could have a "click all that apply..." list... hang on, let me call my lawyer...

Re:What's wrong with folders

[Dasch]

What about adding text labels to files? That way one file can have multiple labels, and can be accessed through several ways with a Labels View or something.

You could for instance label all pictures with your buddy John Doe "john". That way you can quickly find those pictures, even though they lie in different folders ("drunk in florida 2001", "drunk in hawaii 2003").

this is natural selection at its best

[yagu]

I don't think the directory as we know it is dead, it is a nice way to hierarchically (word?) organize our data (but wait, Documents and Settings???). Seriously, directories are intuitive enough and most people get comfortable with them quickly.

But, there are some problems with directories:

• they get messy when too deep (where the heck is that directory I put those files in?)
• in a GUI, they're really really really annoying, and potentially very dangerous. On many occasion I've had people come to me to help them recover a file that "disappeared". Mysterious at first, I came to recognize the dreaded "mouse button accidentally released" during a drag and drop as the common cause for "lost" files in a gui universe. But it gets really dangerous when the lost file from "drag and drop" does something to a system directory, something I've encountered at least twice! (It can almost literally render a system unusable.)
• they become useless when not deep enough (hmmmmmm, I know I have that photo in this directory, but among the 4000 others I can't find it!)
• they're too specific... How many times have you thought, "I'll put it here, no wait, it's more appropriate over there, hmmm...."? And then just give in and put copies of the file in multiple directories (which introduces a whole 'nother slew of issues).
• they're confusing in the quasi-standards community... (This new executable I'm contributing, does it belong in "/usr/bin", "/usr/sbin", "/usr/local/bin"?)

However, this article I think shows the way technology will take us and I like the abstraction and "flattening" of the storage universe. I've already become less neurotic about how to organize and store photos, etc., especially now with photo organizers and desktop search software like Google desktop. For me it makes more sense to "ask" my computer where something is and have it return the top twenty most likely responses (with the ability to drill deeper if necessary).

Directories served a good purpose, but weren't they mostly artifacts anyway? Aren't they kind of an opaqueness of underlying technology? Directories as far as I remember were a way of implementing pointers and references to blocks of data on a drive, albeit a nicely abstracted implementation at the time (except for DOS, ick... (why no ".xxx" extensions allowed for DOS directories, huh?)).

Re:won't happen

[l3v1]

Exactly. Also, who has some real experience with rdbms has to know that there could be actions which are just as wierd to do on a db-based filesystem than easily finding something you lost on old school filesystems. After months of usage I found that using the same old dir-file hierarchy system with google's desktop search in the background is seemingly everything I need. I use the desktop search pretty rarely but on those occasions it really helps. Epecially when searching for months or years old files on multihundred gig storage or, in my case, when searching for a specific article among 9 gigs worth of electronic signal processing library pdf files.

I would say that database-like filesystem handling for search&query is a good idea, shall be done natively, mainly for speed considerations [i.e. I don't want no ms sql services on top of ntfs thankyouverymuch]. But it shouldn't be made cumpolsory, because there are other users out there besides clickety joe6packs who also forget where their dirty socks are hanging.

Spotlight not the be-all end-all of search

[mccalli]

I use Tiger. I upgraded from Panther. And whilst I can search meta-data to my heart's content, for finding actual files the Finder in Tiger is less powerful than Panthers, not more.

Reasons? Well, first of all Spotlight won't search the whole of your drive. Can't remember if it was in /usr/local/bin or /usr/bin? Tough. Spotlight won't help you, it doesn't look in those hierarchies.

Made a mistake typing your search term into Spotlight and on an older machine? Don't even think of hitting that backspace key, or the Finder may go into a spinning beachball hell whilst it tries to live search everything for you.

Want to find just files and nothing else (ie. no meta-data or content-related stuff, just filenames)? Well, you can use the undocumented start-your-search-with-a-double-quote feature, but that doesn't work well because it doesn't understand wildcards (so "*.java won't work, for example, whereas ".java will but would include *.java.backup).Also it seems to lose its idea of filename-only as soon as you hit backspace and try to re-edit it. In other words, typing ".java will find me *.java*, but typing that, then hitting backspace, then typing hte final 'a' character again will start finding me things with java in the content instead of just the name.

It also has poor resource usage - some seem to be lucky, but search the forms and you'll see many people complaining about processes called mdimport or similar hogging large amounts of CPU. Then there's the indexing it does every time you connect a firewire drive - if I reboot my Powerbook in target mode and hook it up to the Power Mac, a large amount of indexing is initiated which slows down my performance on that drive. I can set it to not index, but then it slows down search on that drive. What's needed is for the indexing stuff to be really low priority or user-ppausable perhaps.

Sorry, Spotlight is ok but in the Finder it's a pain more than a help for me. I wouldn't have minded it in addition to Panther's more straightforward 'find a file' bit, but as a total replacement for that it's rather lacking. I'm not even contemplating using it as a complete replacement for a normal directory structure.

Cheers,
Ian

They haven't used Spotlight, have they?

[dpbsmith]

Pie-in-the-sky. Please spare me the deep-think prognostications of people who obviously are unfamiliar with how the facility actually works (or doesn't) in the real world.

When it is good, Spotlight is very, very good. And when it is bad, it is horrid. So far, in my experience, Spotlight has been very, very good about 50% of the time I've really used it (i.e. to find something I wanted to find, as opposed to playing around with it). And horrid the other 50%.

Spotlight has several big problems.

a) It doesn't find things reliably. This isn't like using Google on the Web, where you're happy with the results you find, and mostly don't know about what relevant hits Google missed. You have a very good idea what's on your hard drive, and it is incredibly annoying when Spotlight does NOT find a file you know is there.

There is ongoing discussion of why Spotlight doesn't find things reliably, and, of course, many people who say "It works for me," but the number of users reporting that Spotlight is not finding files they know are there is very significant.

There are various reasons for this. One is that Spotlight has a fairly long built-in exclusion list of directories it doesn't think you really want to search, but, unfortunately, it does not explicitly show you what they are. This is not, however, the only issue.

b) It doesn't find things quickly. Wags are starting to call it "stoplight." Frankly, I'm scared to type anything directly into the search field. I've gotten to the point where I type the search target into a text editor and paste it into the edit field.

The problem is that Spotlight oh-so-cleverly gives real-time live updating of the partial query as you type it in. So if you type in "Slashdot", for example, by the time you have typed in two characters it is trying to display every file on your computer that begins with "sl". For reasons that aren't clear to me, this frequently locks up the Finder's UI with a spinning pizza wheel. The entire Finder becomes unusable--you can't even activate another window and search for the file manually--for big fractions of a minute.

c) A signficant number of users are reporting frequent occasions when Spotlight causes their whole system to slow down. And, in at least one case, I've pinned down a situation in which Spotlight, for some reason, actually causes another program to fail with file I/O errors unless it is prevented from accessing the directories that program is using.

So, Spotlight is sometimes wonderful... but other times is unreliable, slow itself, slows down the rest of the system, and makes other programs unstable.

But aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

No

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

This is going to suck. How will the system account for spelling errors? Poorly, I'll bet. Also, what do you want to bet that this will lead to a completely guided view of the contents of your hard drive, in which OEMs now decide what we can search for and what we can't. It will be like that "These are the system files! Don't f*ck with these!" warning page on windows only much, much angrier.

I say, screw these guys. If you want to get that restrictive with my machine, I shouldn't have to pay for it. I guess it will be "Linux, here I come" time.

Death of folders is greatly exaggerated...

[locarecords.com]

Tiger's Spotlight is good, and certainly better than anything else I have used so far. However, the way it presents the search results is always a bit useless as the top ten seearches are top necessary the way to show me what I need. Additionally the lack of a boolean search is a big mistake as you can't narrow the search down. It is still much much faster for me to remember the folder and go straight to it. When that is no longer the case I'll believe in the death of folders.

We need something to help that is clear from the number of digital objects we have lying round on our computers these days. Some method of collecting these objects into conceptual sets or classifications (apart from file extensions which is not always the most useful) could be really useful - I have read some interesting stuff by people who are Metadata crazy (seem to have lost the links though - the tiger review of metadata writer was really interesting...) Maybe the answers are somewhere there.

But for most people, some method of grouping data, adding categorical schemes, visually and texturally organising and generally making files/objects more plastic in the way that we store them would be a great step forward.

But in any case, nested folders *do* still have uses. And I think we need --in addition to-- rather than --instead of--.

---- Posted anonymous as bloody slashdot is banning IP

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Sometimes I know what's best for me

[Just Some Guy]

Whenever I create a project-specific folder and put a bunch of files in it, I know that those files are directly related to each other. I don't want to search for "files you think might be related to Project Foo" - I want "files I've explicitly said are related to Project Foo".

There are times when searches are ideal for grouping disjoint sets of information. There are many, many more times when a best guess is completely insufficient. Searches to augment folders? Sure. Searches to replace them? No way.

When folders are gone...

[Peldor]

When (if) the OS gets rid of folders, we'll need (and have) 3rd party apps to put things back in a heirarchy of folders. It's a fast, logical way to group things that many people are not going to give up for a search or tag based system.

I prefer the physical metaphor folders provide

[Alzheimers]

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I really hate tagging metadata as the sole means of organizing large sets of files. I tend to prefer the physical metaphor, a place for everything and everything in it's place, over the vast sets of forgettable synonyms you can use to describe a document.

And if I want it in more than one place? Space is cheap - I can make copies of it and put it into different places. Different copies, with the same name!

The main reason I don't like using Gmail is that I can't get used to not having a visual way of organizing my data. In my yahoo messages, I mark an email and move it to a folder. Then I have the comfortably familiar folder tree, that lets me know all of the subcategories I can choose. It's automatic, it's easy, and it does what I want it to.

Advanced search features are great, but not at the cost of useability. If it triples the amount of time it takes me to go through my inbox in order to tag every email with relevant metadata, it's not saving me any time or energy.

Folders may die, but at what cost? It certainly won't offer me any productivity increases, and people less knowledgeable than me will find it even more difficult without that metaphor to relate to.

Databases are great for compiling numbers and facts. They're not so user friendly as to become the next great interface for the masses.

What's more...

[cryptochrome]

It will be too easy for files to get lost. Say you don't label something properly, or you change the label, or you forget the name, or the name is unmemorable - what will happen to the file? Just sit there on your disk taking up space, never to be seen again?

And how about old/less useful files that are unnecessarily included in searches, forcing you to read over more file names to find what you want?

One handy feature about folders I've (automatically or intentionally) organized things in is it makes it easy to go back and figure out what I no longer need, and delete it, thus freeing up disk space and reducing clutter. Spotlight is designed to GENERATE clutter.

Re:What's more...

[apoc.famine]

Not using apple at the moment, I'm entirely unqualified to respond, but I'll never let such a trivial problem stop me.

As long as enough metadata is tagged to a file, you'll be able to track it down. I.E., the program it was created with, the user who created it, and the date. If you've lost a spreadsheet you were working on last week, open a "spreadsheets from last week" folder, and there it is.

If you need a document from last year, open a "documents from last year, not having x,y,z tags, created by me, etc, etc" folder. Enough metadata is added that you shouldn't be able to lose documents.

In contrast, in windows, if you don't save to the right folder, and you don't remember the name, it's far harder to find your file. I don't believe there is a "created by" field to search on, and you have to rely upon extension rather than program which created it. And it can be anywhere in a tangled directory structure. Spotlight means (I think) that the worse case scenario is you pull up all items created using X program by user Y, during time period Z. And that's better than windows can do.

Re:What's more...

[peragrin]

Have you actually used spotlight? or are you just another it's not windows so it sucks person?

Spotlight searches within files , not just names.

You forgot to label a file?, You can remember the title? type it in to spotlight, one of the results will be your file.

3 seconds you just narrowed down your list of 3,000 files to search to just 10.

I don't use label's a lot in gmail, but I did import all my gmail into my Apple mail folders. Why so i can do an offline search of all 30mb of my email in folders.

Spotlight is close to being a local version of google.

Re:What's more...

[mbbac]

Spotlight also remembers the last time a file was used even if it wasn't altered in addition to the last modified date.

Paradigm Shift for Computer self-management?

[cjmike]

If Apple and Microsoft and whoever else allow for searching a file by type, keywords, some new as-yet-unnamed meta information, etc. wouldn't it stand to reason that the OS itself could then manage the placement of files to optimize performance instead of having arbitrary user folders that have no particular understanding of the underlying disk layout?

It would seem that allowing the system to optimize file placement could greatly help performance and stability by reducing or even elinimating file fragmentation.

Granted, convincing Grandma that she just needs to type in a few keywords instead of opening one of 100 files on her Desktop may take some human engineering.

Mike

I'm with the rest of the guys here:

[wild_berry]

Folders won't die, they're one meaningful way to deal with stored information.

Like the CLI and GUI are two interface paradigms, the Nautilus Spatial and Filesystem Browsers are two ways to navigate through folders of data, having a user decide where information is stored won't change.

The whole UI paradigm has picked up a lot from everyday office concepts: documents filed in folders in filing cabinets. That's not going to change any time soon, even with search software making it convenient to find things, because we will still need to put things in storage. Storage folders may become shortcuts-to-frequent-searches but this won't remove their existence from the interfaces we use, and will still feature hierarchical search capabilities so we can refine the bounds of what we're looking for.

Yeah. No Problem.

[YesIAmAScript]

File systems, starting with Apple's HFS in 1986 or so use database-type structures to store info about files. The directory a file is in is only a field in the database. So it doesn't change anything about the data structures if you store all the files in one directory or in many.

However, if you do try to iterate that directory it will take forever to do so. But in theory that isn't going to happen, as directories are no longer organizational strategies at that point.

HFS stores all file data in B-trees.

Re:Opera invented labels?

[WIAKywbfatw]

Sigh. Go read the Opera website. Opera is heavily opposed to software patents and in favour of competing on merit rather than through the courts.

If they weren't - if instead they were patent-happy and litigous in nature - then Firefox would have been stripped of several of its features, as a great many of them were borrowed from Opera.

And, I didn't say Opera invented labelling, only that they introduced labelling rather than foldering to email way before Gmail did. Had they wanted to, Opera could have easily patented labelling in emails, especially with the way that the USPTO gives out patents to everyone who so much as looks in its direction.

All clear now?

iTunes Imports how-to

[Dog135]

I personally have iTunes set to not organize, and not move my music. I keep all my songs in folders organized by genre on the second partition of my HD. iTunes gladly "imports" them by just remembering where they are.

Go to: iTunes->preferences->advanced tab

uncheck "Keep iTunes music folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes music folder when adding to library"

Create your iTunes playlists the same way your folders are aranged. Select your playlist, drag your folder to it to import those songs into it. Your songs stay where you put them, and just their location is recorded in the DB.

On folder hierarchies and social bookmarks

[otisg]

Of course!
Hierarchies suck for large amounts of data (when was the last time you went to ODP or Yahoo Directory to find something?)

That (folder hierarchies suck, search rules!) is one of the main hypothesis behind Simpy [1], a social bookmarking service with tagging and full-text search (think of it as a better and prettier delicious), so there is even a FAQ entry about it:
http://www.simpy.com/simpy/FAQ.do#hierarchies

[1]
Simpy's demo/demo account, to see the goodness of bookmarks without hierarchies

Re:On folder hierarchies and social bookmarks

[Sebastopol]

On the contrary, I have over 1300 documents in "My Documents", and I'd be fukked without my folder hieararchy. How could a flat list with search capability help me?

I haven't used this OS, but the screenshot on Wired looked stupid: Why sort on HTML and PDF documents? Was that just one configuration? I can't imagine how I'd get through my documents without hierarchies. Once I've sorted down to a folder with ~100 files in it, then this search stuff would help,otherwise, seems like a hassle. I use Google desktop for Outlook, and it sucks compared to a disciplined hierarchy of folders.

What Is The Hubub?

[theManInTheYellowHat]

You surely could use this meta-data to make folders?
It is simply a feature that you can or may not want to use.

It would almost certanly have work that way for backward compatabilty. Consider haveing a webserver on a Mac with this file system. The URL is going to have to conform to the current spec.

positional memory

[Heisenbug]

You know that memory trick, where you remember a long list of items by mentally walking through your house and assigning them positions? There's a huge chunk of our brains that's devoted to remembering *what* something is based on *where* it is.

So for example: 5 or 6 days ago I downloaded a plugin for some blog package or other, written in php or perl I think ... it had a name like Exercise or Expendable, I forget ... Now I need to find it. What do I remember about it? That I saved it to the Desktop.

That kind of thing will always have a place in my Finder. I like metadata search too, but I'm just not with-it enough to give up my brain's best way of remembering things ...

Re:positional memory

[3770]

You also remember this:

5 or 6 days ago I downloaded a plugin for some blog package or other, written in php or perl I think ... it had a name like Exercise or Expendable

But you had no practical way of using that to find the package.

No no no...

[Paradox]

No matter what, you'll always have a visual representation. Be it saved searches like GMail, or something else more like the Finder, you will always be able to visually navigate the data.

That's important. If you can't visually navigate it, then it's far too easy to lose stuff. It's just that the bulk of your organization is going to be done by a search engine. What's nice about that is that you can retroactively organize things. Ever had a pile of downloads and wish that you had organized them more? Well, now you can!

It can also be a tool for organization, not just the end of organization itself. Extending the cluttered dowload folder above, the first thing you could do is break the downloads up into groups ordered by date, broken by weeks. You could also search for things that have never been looked at (creation date is the same as modify date).

It also means that multiple people can share the exact same filesystem, but look at it many ways. Your children may only care about the games, email and webbrowser. You probaby care about these things, but you also care about your work.

It takes some abstract thought, since no one has a system that really makes it perfect yet, but Spotlight is a huge step in the right direction, and when we get there and polish ip up, it'll be a boon for everyone, from Grandma to Larry the Bitter IT guy.

Re:So the metaphor is more like...

[AKAImBatman]

Mathematically, it's like sets, yes. Sets are core to database theory, and file systems are a form of database. The catch is that current filesystems are missing a lot of relational theory that could improve their usability.

Metaphorically, it's like using a label gun to apply those little stickers that say "Property of XYZ". If you were to lump together the labelled objects from my wife, kids, and myself, some stuff would be labelled mine, some stuff would be labelled my wife's, some stuff would be labelled with a kid's name, and some stuff would have a mixture of labels. e.g. Wife/Husband, Kid1/Kid2, Wife/Husband/Kid1/Kid2 ~= Family Property (Family Property could be an alternative label for everyone.), etc.

Files aren't hierarchial anyway...

[Otto]

The hard disk has no concept of hierarchy. It's a big, flat space full of blocks. You store data in those blocks.

Hierarchy is added by the filesystem you use. For a simple example, the FAT filesystem keeps a list of the root directory somewhere in that flat space. It contains pointers to blocks of data which could be files, or could be other directories, or could even be additions to the same directory.

The concept is basically that instead of all that, you could add metadata to your files that describe what those files are, what they contain, when they were made, etc. A lot of this metadata can be automatically generated (a lot of it is already). Then you build databases to index and sort this metadata. Then, instead of a hierarchical system to organize your files, you query the database.

And hey, this doesn't necessarily have to *replace* hierarchical organization. Some people will never do that anyway. But metadata structures like this can be built alongside hierarchical organization. Who says you have to organize in only one way? That disk is just a big flat space, after all, you could have several different ways of looking at the same stuff without too much effort.

And this database of metadata doesn't have to be limited to just descriptions of the files, it can contain the content as well. All those word documents? Read the content, build indexes based on it, then you can search for keywords in them as easily as anything else.

You can save these searches as well, so as to make repeated use of them easily. Heck, you don't even have to abandon the hierarchy concept, just turn "folders" into "named searches" and you can organize it just the same. Like a folder called "Word Documents" which contains all those, and it has a subfolder called "Stuff I worked on in the last month" which is all those word docs you messed with last month... Makes finding things a bit simpler, don't you think?

Yes, this indexing takes up space, but storage space is cheap and getting cheaper, you know. Gotta use it for something.

The funniest thing....

[Chyeld]

The funniest thing I see in this discussion are how many people are nay saying the concept not realizing that they already have a crippled version of it on their computer as FOLDERS.
I'm seeing people complaining about namespace clashes, removeable media, flat file systems, mis-labeling, labeling, and 'lost files'.
People, these are issues you ALREADY deal with.

1. Folders, ARE NOT REAL. They are labels created for your conveience in an extremely limited database. Your file does not exist in a manila sheet of folded paper on your hard drive. It already exists as just an entry in a database pointing to a location on the hard drive.
2. Your hard drive is, for all intents and purposes, a flat file system! With all that this entails.
3. Namespace conflicts are moot if you aren't tying the file's ID to the name but instead an internal field. As most filesystems already do.
4. You already lose files, you already forget files. The advantage in this case goes to the "Smart Folders" since you can atleast set up criteria like "Created today" or "Last accessed a year ago" to find what you've lost.
5. We already have solutions to removeable media, it's called a seperate database for each filesystem attached to the computer which is stored on the media the filesystem resides in.
6. And the arguement that "It's going to be too hard to label everything" is just pure silliness. You already use either file things by name or by some sort of 'grouping', applying this minimal amount of organization is already required just by deciding where to save a file and what name to save it under. Why would this be any harder under a system with even more options?

But the Finder doesn't just "Find"

[patheticloser]

Sure, you can let files accumulate on your hard drive with all the organization of a pile of sawdust, but finding the files by Spotlight or a Smart Folder query is only the beginning. You will want to copy or move one or more of those files, so it is vital to have an application with a good interface to arrange the move between target and destination (e.g., hard drive -> optical). Spotlight/Smart Folders are by no means ready for that, and by the time you add that functionality, you're back to something like the Finder all over again.

agreed

[commodoresloat]

I think iTunes' behavior in this regard is close to ideal. Perhaps the user should be warned before their whole library is rearranged like happened to the person posting above, but in general I like how iTunes arranges the library and I prefer that it copies songs into the main itunes folder. I periodically delete my download directory because I don't want random mp3s scattered about my desktop, and I don't want to have to worry about accidentally deleting a file that is in itunes' directory. And if I really want to use the finder to look for an mp3, the library is arranged in a perfectly reasonable manner.

On another note, my biggest complaint about iTunes defaults is the "Use error correction while reading CDs" checkbox. I ruined much of my library on importing because I left this unchecked when I first started importing my collection. A lot of songs sound like crap; random distortion really loud, and there's no way to know which songs got screwed until they are playing. Why have an almost hidden preference that will ruin your library if not checked? Perhaps other people have better luck importing with this turned off than I do, but now whenever I use a computer's itunes for the first time I make damn sure that box is checked before importing CDs....

I agree with the article

[Joshua53077]

I'm pretty much a fairly sophisticated user but my main tasks are email, web surfing, etc. When I installed Tiger, I wasn't that impressed with most of the new features. Dashboard is cool but not revolutionary and I considered spotlight to be a replacement for the Find command, which I rarely use. Then the other day I wanted to open Photoshop, which is on a firewire drive and nested under a couple of folders. I decided to try to use Spotlight to pull it up. After I typed "P-H-O-T-O-S" I could see photoshop selected as my "top hit." It reduced my interaction with the computer and allowed me to quickly get to work. Personally, I think this should be the goal of all software developers...to reduce interaction with the computer and to allow the user to work. After figuring out this neat trick a few days ago, I really haven't used the finder since, I just start typing the name of a document or application and it pops right up. I described it to someone as the document comes to me....I no longer have to go to the document. I think there's something truly revolutionary about that.

Which is entirely his fault...

[Senjutsu]

Considering it asks during the install whether he would like to manage his music folder or let iTunes do it for him, and the default is to leave it to the user to manage it.

finding it is not the same as storing it

[calzones]

Losing 'Finder' or any similar filesystem UI, in favor of dynamic smart folders, queries and searches, is a bad idea. In the real world, you put stuff in a closet, in a trunk, under the table, in the attic, in your left pants pocket or your shirt pocket... you devise all these great schemes to know exactly where everything you own should be. When you get to your car you pull your keys out of your pocket. If you have them in your briefcase, you get disoriented for a second. When you leave your car, you feel the keys in your pocket and are reassured everything is as it should be. But, in the real world, you also lose stuff because sometimes you misplace it or you forget just what your logic was so many years ago. So search tools, maps, etc, are great aids to finding stuff so you can once again use them. But they are NOT themselves the stuff you seek. Feel free to throw away a used up map and be confident it's just a map you're tossing, not the destination itself. Also, you're always going to want some stuff to be far away and archived, out of the way, out of sight, out of mind so you can focus on the stuff you care about right now. You really don't ever need to see that invoice from 1989 again, do you? Well, just in case, you'll keep it in a safe place, but out of the way. Enter Spotlight and smart folders. Amazing tools that help us find the long lost stuff. Cooler still is how you can use them as reporting tools. How many different times did you write something about your pyscho ex? Spotlight knows. But the signal-to-noise ratio when using such tools is disorienting and unreliable. If I go to my kitchen to use my favorite chef's knife, I depend on it being in the place where I put it. I don't want to utter "chef's knife" to a 'smart drawer' that suddenly slides open showing me all 10 different chef knives in my household and poke through them all just to select my favorite knife. No, I want to move my hand to the exact spot where I know it always will be; right at the top right of my other 4 premium cooking knives, none of which is a chef's knife, and all in one nice wooden block, on the counter, in my kitchen. Now imagine the chaos of a shared environment or corporate setting. That's where smart folders actually shine. Because now each person in the company can organize the files for which they are responsible as they see fit, and everyone else can use smart folders to cross-reference across departments or use search tools to find specific cases. But Smart folders must remain exactly what they are: a _View_ of an existing organization; not an organization unto themselves. Users must never confuse the two because a file may be found in more than one smart folder. So it's imperative that the user understand that the file really only exists once. Back to my kitchen, while it would kick ass if I could open one magic drawer that give me access to all the chef's knives so I can take inventory, or I can decide that it's time to replace, sharpen or retire one or another, and another magic drawer that shows me all kitchen utensils of a certain brand, I don't want these dynamic slice of the current state of my kitchen to become the organization of my kitchen. Finally, think about this: databases can be searched, sliced and diced in anyway you like. But you still have to organize the data into tables, never repeating the same information twice; any database guy worth his salt will bend over backwards to keep it as normalized as possible. It's not just one big table. The filesystem is no exception. Reality is not an exception. Even your brain can't effectively perceive the world using a model that would be an exception. It can't. So why bother pursuing an organizational system without logical groups, hierarchies, and spatial cues?