
What's with this anti-directory structure movement? - wim
http://www.osnews.com/story/26220/What_s_with_this_anti-directory_structure_movement_
======
cstross
From the article: _I have honestly never seen a single person have any issues
with directories, nested or no, and as old as the concept might be, the people
I interact with seem to be able to handle it just fine._

Twitch.

The author's clearly been interacting with different people from the ones _I_
know. 80-somethings who didn't grow up with computers frequently get
hopelessly confused by directories. The philosophy professor who's been using
a Mac since the mid-80s is a bit harder to explain. And then there was the
time I got called in in the early 90s to fix the office PC used by a
succession of secretaries -- running MS-DOS -- and discovered they'd saved
something over 2000 Word Perfect files in the root directory because _none_ of
the temps the company had employed over a 12 month period had ever heard of
directories.

In my experience many casual users (for values of something like 10%-50% of
computer users these days) simply do not "get" hierarchical storage at all;
they find it as baffling as predicate calculus. Hence the desire of some
software vendors -- who are trying to provide machines that _anyone_ can use
without training -- to move away from it, at least on the user's side.

~~~
acabal
I don't know. I think that at a certain point people have to accept that there
are just some things must be learned in order to operate a computer. It would
be nice if computers could just read the mind of the user, but until then, the
user must learn some things about how the computer operates. Folders, I think,
is one of those things.

In the end, _some_ knowledge is required. If we remove folders, then that
knowledge will change from "What is a folder, and where did I put that file?"
to "What is an application, and which one did I use to create that file, and
how do I get that file from one application to another?" (Think word
processing program to email attachment.)

Either way, the end user _has to learn something_. We can continue dumbing
down concepts and interfaces with the noble goal of making it easier for the
people who just don't want to understand how computers work (let's face it,
learning basic folder manipulation isn't hard, especially with Google--or a
manual or family member, for those who can't even use Google), but there will
_always_ be a lazier person, and eventually we'll end up dumbing things down
until they become useless.

Maybe the better solution is to have a better "Home" folder concept. I don't
know how it is in OSX, but in Windows the home folder is a confusing
collection of sample files, folder-spam from other apps, and "library" views
that masks the entire concept, but only sometimes. Fixing that mess and making
it more like, say, a Linux home folder (/home/acabal/videos/) would be a good
starting point without losing the usefulness of folders altogether.

~~~
cstross
* I think that at a certain point people have to accept that there are just some things must be learned in order to operate a computer.*

That statement encapsulates an ideological outlook.

I, personally, agree with you. (I happen to have a CS degree and used to work
in the industry: _of course_ I agree with you!)

However, purely pragmatically, a lot of people _don't_ agree with that
position. They no more want to know how their computer works than they want to
know how to adjust the ignition timing on their car. Yes, in principle they
could learn that stuff; but they consider it to be a waste of their valuable
time, for which they have other priorities.

By way of an analogy: we're in the position of 17th century puritans asserting
that _of course_ everyone must learn to read so they can read the Bible for
themselves and interpret the word of god directly. (While a large chunk of the
audience at the time disagreed strongly and wanted to leave that to the
priests.)

That's how things are for a large chunk of the general public, whether we want
it to be so or not. And as computer use becomes a universal, pervasive element
of society, we're going to run up against it increasingly.

~~~
acabal
I wouldn't compare learning folders to learning car ignition timing. That's
more like learning about inodes--something that's interesting but irrelevant
to anyone but enthusiasts.

I would instead compare folders to knowing that your car's oil must be
changed. (Who doesn't love a car analogy?) You can survive without that
knowledge, and you even can pay others to do it. But it's very simple stuff,
and at the very, very least, in order to (successfully) own a car you _must_
know that the oil has to be changed every now and then, if not by you then by
someone else. It's a matter of fundamental knowledge of the tools you're
using.

If you want to live without that knowledge, then it's your own fault really,
because it's not hard to learn and every car ever made uses the concept. It's
in the manual. If you don't want to learn it, are too lazy to, think it's too
hard, or have different priorities, then that's cool--but don't expect car
makers to put effort into molding cars to your whims, because it turns out oil
is pretty useful in a car.

If a person was born in 1870 and decided to buy a car in 1930, well, it's up
to them to learn that cars need their oil changed. Age is not really an
excuse, nor is being born to a different generation.

In either case, you're right: the general public will continue to be too
uninterested to learn basic computing principles. (And again I mean _basic_ ,
like files and folders.) But ruining it for the rest of us isn't the way to
fix that.

~~~
lovskogen
It's the users own fault? Really? We make products for the users, and they
never do anything wrong – and it's never their fault.

~~~
acabal
Sorry, but the buck has to stop somewhere. For example, if a handful of users
can't figure out how to use a mouse, then do we replace all mouses with Wacom
tablets because they're so "inelegant" and "unintuitive" to a few people? No,
because it turns out they're very useful for most people who get it.

Do they require practice and a certain (very small) amount of domain
knowledge? Yes. Is that a bad thing, considering how useful they are? No.

"The user is always right" isn't an ultimate mandate. The customer isn't right
if they come in to your store and demand everything for free. Likewise a
driver isn't right if he doesn't want to figure out which pedal is "stop" and
which one is "go". You must have a certain small amount of domain knowledge to
use the complex tools you're given, and dumbing things down for the lowest
common denominator is a Sisyphean task because there's always a _lower_ common
denominator just under them.

~~~
lovskogen
Touch screens replaced mice with something that feels more natural.

~~~
acuozzo
> Touch screens replaced mice with something that feels more natural.

Oh, yeah? Show me the data you have that supports your statement.

~~~
lovskogen
People are buying and using touch devices, and they claim it's easy to use.

~~~
acuozzo
People have purchased enough touch devices to _replace_ mice? Is using a mouse
a weird thing to do nowadays?

~~~
lovskogen
No, but it's an evolution – mice is still needed for power users and pro apps.

------
kalleboo
When I see people struggle with folders, it's these two things:

\- System, Application and Settings storage folders that the typical user
really shouldn't have to see in the first place

\- Predefined directory structures like "My Documents" that the user didn't
create themselves. Especially when apps crud things up even more with
subdirectories with files the user didn't create themselves and can't edit
themselves (on my Mac I have "EyeTV Archive", "Final Cut Pro Documents",
"iChats", etc... these should be hidden in Library folders until the user
exports them). The Desktop is among these. Storing files on the Desktop
shouldn't be possible.

If when new users got a computer, the only storage visible was a completely
blank home folder, I think a lot of this confusion would disappear. It's not
nesting of folders per-se that's the problem, it's that there's a ton of shit
there from the beginning that the user has no idea what it is, where they are
right now, and where their document will go. When the user created everything
themselves and applications don't save documents go into special folders by
default, I think a lot of that confusion is gone.

In this world, users who don't understand folders won't create them, and so
they won't be confronted with the complexity. The "app silo" model could be
emulated by app open dialogs only showing files created by the app itself by
default.

Personally, I hate the app silo model. I like having a folder per project with
all the related files in it. If I'm working on a report, I want to be able to
quickly get to the text chapters, the graphs, my data sources, etc without
jumping between apps so much.

~~~
kalleboo
Followup: Anyone confused by hierarchical folders is going to be just as
confused by a database model with tags and saved searches.

~~~
danieldk
Maybe, but I guess ideally, the user would want to be able to say: "open my
2008 tax report" or "send Jack the photos of my trip to Paris this year". This
fits more closely to a Spotlight-like search plus actions, a direction that
Apple is clearly moving to.

Sure, things are imperfect now: Spotlight search does not catch everything and
Siri often messes up. Coming from hierarchy-oriented interfaces to documents,
it sometimes feels like throwing your data in a dark pit, where it is
impossible to retrieve it again. But if they can nail this stuff correctly
some day, we surely have come a long way!

In some cases it almost works perfectly already. I never put e-mail in IMAP
folders anymore, since Mail.app's search functionality allows me to find stuff
quicker and more effectively.

~~~
kalleboo
I agree that good search is essential and helps a lot with not needing to
organize stuff anymore. Making good sense of automatic metadata (with photos,
stuff like geotagging and iPhoto's Faces) will help even more.

But there's still often a need to browse, and I haven't seen many successful
implementations of tags yet, so I'm still skeptical that it's much more
intuitive than folder. I know Gmail does it well, but I rarely use their web
app, and not many email clients support it. Meanwhile I've never seen anyone
use tags in, for instance iPhoto.

------
crazygringo
This all boils down to several salient points:

1) Nobody, not even 90-year-old computer newbies, has trouble understanding
hierarchical folders. There could not be a more natural concept of
organization. It corresponds to a box inside a storage box inside a closet
inside a room inside a house inside a neighborhood, etc. It's just every level
is called a folder. Saying that "x" group of people "can't understand" that is
just insulting to them, frankly.

2) People who use a flat directory to save 1000's of invoices on a computer
which is only used for that, who do not understand folders -- that's fine.
This doesn't prove folders are non-intuitive. They just don't _need_ to
understand folders, because the job doesn't require folders. The moment their
job does, someone can explain it to them, and they will get it, the same way
they get that paperclips go in the box on the shelf in the closet.

3) The original Mac OS (say, up to System 6) did a great job of making folders
understandable. They were physical icons, physical window locations, they were
easy to use. The Open/Save dialogs could be a bit confusing, and still are --
there's definitely room for improvement there.

4) Modern OS's do a _terrible_ job at making folders understandable, because
there are drive directories, often hidden, and then multiple user folders, and
their Documents directories, and then things _outside_ their Documents
directories (like Desktop, Downloads, etc.), and fake folders that show the
content of multiple other folders, etc.

5) So people are rightly claiming that folders are a mess and confusing. Yes
they are, on modern OS's. But the problem is not with the concept of folders,
it's with their back-assward modern implementations. So don't throw the baby
out with the bathwater and claim that folders are bad. Instead, the solution
is:

6) Modern OS's and apps: stop trying to organize our damned files for us! Stop
auto-creating "Downloads" and "My Pictures" and "My Skype Photos" and "My
Virtual Machines" directories. Just stop it! Instead, give each user their own
home directory, have it be _empty_ on a new computer, have every application
open/save things in it by default (including downloads), and let the user
organize things gradually as they see fit. And don't let anyone but a power
user ever get outside of this directory.

(And ideally, stop allowing users to put documents on their desktop -- it just
confuses things and nobody has ever come up with an intuitive way to integrate
that with the concept of user folders (my desktop is _inside_ my user folder,
what?). Documents on a desktop is an outgrown metaphor that just nobody seems
to have the courage to jettison.)

~~~
ThomPete
You are missing the point here.

Just because you understand something in real life does not by any metrics
mean that you understand it on a computer.

You grew up with computers for you it's secondary but you learned it.

Someone who have never used computers before do not understand the metaphor.

So no it's not insulting them.

2) Folders are non-intuitive if they aren't learned. There is no natural
transfer of understanding between putting documents in a folder physically and
then using your moves to drag some icons around. You assume there is, but
there isn't, it has to be learned.

5) What people complain about is that it's not the web. They just want to
click a link that takes them to where they want to be taken. Of course folders
are a mess and confusing cause most data is a mess an confusing.

6) I am pretty sure that it actually works.

I think your understanding of how normal users think is probably as inaccurate
as it could probably be.

~~~
drivebyacct2
>Folders are non-intuitive if they aren't learned

This is the second time you've used the word intuitive. I'm not sure if you
don't understand what it means or if you just misspoke twice.

Something _is_ intuitive if it doesn't need to be taught/learned.

~~~
ThomPete
I am well aware what it means. And you need to learn what folders are on a
computer and what it means to put something into them.

In other words it's not intuitive. People don't understand it in one context
just because they understand it in another.

Or let me put it another way.

Nothing is intuitive, you have to learn it which renders the word in this
context useless.

~~~
drivebyacct2
I'm not taking a stand either way on if they're intuitive, I've been using a
PC for far too long to even try to think about it.

But what you just said is the opposite of: " _Folders are non-intuitive if
they aren't learned_ "

It would have made sense if you'd said: "Folders are non-intuitive because
they must be learned".

~~~
ThomPete
And yet you seem to understand what I am trying to say.

Fine with me.

~~~
drivebyacct2
_Only_ because you wrote a bunch of other stuff that gave it context. Stubborn
much? That statement, on it's own, says the opposite of what you meant. I
don't know why you're arguing with me about it.

~~~
ThomPete
I am arguing with you about it because it's worth arguing about.

There is such a thing called intuition. It just doesn't transcend the way the
OP claimed it would.

Intuition is something you build via experience. It allow you to navigate even
things you haven't been exposed to before. As long as you understand the basic
premise of the context.

The general consensus and then point of the OP was to say that understanding
the metaphor is enough to make you navigate two different paradigms just
because you understand one of them and use metaphors to connect them . I.e.
you can use intuition from one of them in the other. This is simply wrong and
is not given at all.

Which leads me to say that intuition is learned. I.e. it's not some linear
concept where everything fit together, but rather it exists de facto
disconnected underneath the metaphors and concepts.

------
wickedchicken
A directory structure is too restrictive, much like Java and C++ inheritance.
Cluster and search based file access is way more flexible and fluid, but we
haven't had a good UI or overlay onto traditional filesystems yet. Think of
Go's interface model, but for files.

Imagine you have a file that is a vendor-provided html template. Does it go in
vendor/ or templates/? vendor/templates? What if you want to find out all the
templates in use by the system? Document that somewhere and expect a newhire
to 'just know' where you store the fragments of your templates?

Sometimes there really _isn't_ a parent-child relationship between data,
modeling it like that is always true seems very 1980s.

Perhaps Rob Pike can sum it up better than I can:

"My late friend Alain Fournier once told me that he considered the lowest form
of academic work to be taxonomy. And you know what? Type hierarchies are just
taxonomy. You need to decide what piece goes in what box, every type's parent,
whether A inherits from B or B from A. Is a sortable array an array that sorts
or a sorter represented by an array? If you believe that types address all
design issues you must make that decision.

I believe that's a preposterous way to think about programming. What matters
isn't the ancestor relations between things but what they can do for you."

~~~
super_mario
Again, these two are not mutually exclusive. You can store your files in a
tree structure, yet unify various nodes by tags or index of concepts.

For example, if I store my photos by Year/Year-Month/Day/

and I'm interested in pictures of my son in the last year, it does not mean
these pictures have to be all in the same flat one year folder. It is doable
today in spotlight

$ mdfind -interpret "kind:image name date:>1/1/2012"

------
gbog
I think the other point of view, the anti-directory one, is well reflected in
this review of OSX: [http://informationarchitects.net/blog/mountain-lions-new-
fil...](http://informationarchitects.net/blog/mountain-lions-new-file-system/)

The most notable saying is that "As soon as we have more than a handful of
notions, or (beware!) more than one hierarchical level of notions, it gets
hard for most brains to build a mental model of that information
architecture."

Here is my ranty answer:

~~~~

My god. Who the HELL are those guys to be so dismissive of human brain?

I have a kid, he is learning ten words a day, and this little boy is not a
genius: It is a normal human being in formation. He is also playing a lot with
my old legos, and he is communicating better and better in two very different
languages. I can tell you, dear "Information architects" that he can already
handle more than one hierarchical level!

I have worked in normal companies before. By that I mean companies were people
have meetings, get bored by many slideshows every week, and use excel
spreadsheets daily. In this kind of companies, geniuses are not the norm. And
all of these people, all of these common "brains" could handle easily "more
than one hierarchical level".

So, dear "Information architects", please keep your stinky morgue to yourself.

Human brain is the most wonderful thing that can be observed in the world. Its
capacities surpass anything we (human brains) can modelize with our other
tools. A kid of 3 years is much better in all what matters than a computer.
We, normal human beings, won't let you grow a new generation of lobotomized
humans for whom it is "hard" to build a "mental model" with "more than one
hierarchical level".

Post-scriptum: After a mandatory proof-reading, I sit there and I wonder:
maybe my legitimate anger against your aristocratic hauteur did blind me of a
better explanation. The "brain limitation" you are attributing so kindly to
"most brains" is just your own problem, maybe. Then your are not as cynical as
it seems. But then I repeat: of any of my colleagues, old and young, clever
and stupid, ubergeek or almost illiterate, all could handle a f __king tree
structure for their file. Thanks for considering them (a bit).

~~~
epo
My God, what is it about this topic? Is there something about geeks that makes
them think a mastery of nested folders is a validation of their manhood?

There are other, and probably better, organising principles than hierarchical
directories. It is not anti-directory as the original author so witlessly
claims but a search for better, easier to understand, alternatives. Something
which Apple have repeatedly done, and by so doing made a lot money in the
process.

~~~
super_mario
Trees are so yesterday. I think we should move to cyclic graphs for our
filesystems.

~~~
fferen
Don't worry, with the magic of symlinks anything is possible!

~~~
super_mario
Yes indeed :D.

------
andybak
There is a flaw with directories and hierarchical storage and it's not their
conceptual complexity.

Gmail made a move away from folders and it's one that I've embraced.

1\. It's easy to spend too long manually organizing things into folders. It's
the kind of relaxing, busy-work we can fall into to avoid the hard stuff we're
supposed to be doing.

2\. There are many arbitrary ways to rearrange hierarchies and no clear limit
for how deep they should be. Many of us with slight OCD-ish tendencies can
fall down the rabbit-hole here.

3\. It's manual work that the computer should partially be doing for us.

There are ways to mitigate these problems. Multiple views of the same
structure, tags instead of folders and easily accessibly, instantaneous search
can teach us to be less dogmatic about our directories.

I very rarely need to use tags/folders with my email now. Search works for me
90% of the time. It's only special tasks such as doing my tax returns or
tracking a particularly complex bunch of emails where I might use tags. I
think my file system is probably an order of magnitude more complicated and
there is less automatic metadata with files (my file system doesn't know what
project a file is related unless I tell it whereas you can tell a lot about an
email just using from/to/cc fields.)

At this point I was hoping to end on some kind of conclusion but I can't think
of one.

~~~
hmmyeah
The ways something can be abused are not arguments against proper use of it.

"It's manual work that the computer should partially be doing for us."

I disagree, partially ^^ Tags, or where something is located; both can be part
of the content.

The cool thing about folders is, if you don't want them, simply don't create
them... but don't take it away from those who do themselves more good than
harm with it, please :/

~~~
w0utert
> The ways something can be abused are not arguments against proper use of it.

While true, the rate at which things are abused appears to be highly
correlated to how convenient or user-friendly they are, or how well they solve
the problem they are supposed to be solving.

Just looking at how many people have desktops crowded with every document they
ever opened, or how many computer-illiterate friends and relatives have asked
me how they should backup or transfer their files to and from other computers,
because they don't even know you can actually get to them by other means than
the 'open file' dialog in their Word Processor, signals to me that many people
don't really think organizing files using folders is something they need or
want.

~~~
jakejake
It seems to be two different arguments happening. One is that the hierarchical
structure is outdated and/or broken. The other is that people aren't using it
correctly (or at all).

I'd agree with the later but I don't see it as a reason to get rid of file
structures for those of us that do use them.

------
webjunkie
I think at some point Apple will sell us "folders within folders" as a
gorgeous update that took so long to really get it right.

~~~
zalew
and patent it.

------
gbog
That's a refreshing view. I fully agree. I hate it when a music player do not
allow me to browse my clean and deep directory. I detest the fact that
apparently no Picture manager is letting me to see my 10 years of photos in
the hierarchy of my choice, that I implemented patiently in a directory
structure.

And to the many comments right here that argue that people have hard time
dealing with directories, I have one question: Did you ever work within a
normal company (I mean, the kind of company where you have people in suit or
tailleur doing ppt and excels)?

I have, and I can tell you that the most stubborn HR assistant will have his
or her files almost neatly catalogued in a hierarchy, and most of the time
they will be able to find the "2001 report on office expenses" directly from
the hierarchy.

Granted, most will not use a clever and consistent naming convention for
files, allowing to sort them properly (eg. all files prefixed by year). And
that is a problem. A problem that the hierarchy solves properly, by the way.

So, I would bet the Apple/Google "no file" movement is a dead end. Worse, it
is a trap. Check who will benefit from this move: Users? No. Advertisers?
Maybe. DRM corporations? Certainly...

~~~
qxcv
> DRM corporations? Certainly...

How so?

~~~
gbog
Well, if you do not have any mp3 or video files on your hard drive anymore, if
all of that is in the cloud, then it will be much easier to enforce copyrights
(and censorship, and surveillance, by the same way).

~~~
qxcv
Ah, I had assumed you were making an argument against all approaches to data
management which do not use a directory-based approach rather than just online
ones.

------
awakeasleep
I had to stop reading at "I've never met a user who has trouble navigating
nested directories."

My experience tells me he is in the 'tech guy' bubble. As someone who
volunteered helping city kids use computers, had a 'business' fixing people's
computers, and has a dad who teaches a free computer class at a library, and
has worked tech support, I say with some confidence that the silent majority
of people don't understand folders at all.

You have to be a tech savvy, middle to upper middle class person with
relatively high motivation before you stand a chance of understanding folder
structure. Exceptions abound, of course, but then again most 9-5 working,
intelligent people struggle to organize their data in folders even though they
fit my demographic of people with a chance to understand.

~~~
zcvosdfdgj
I stopped reading at the same point. There are people confused by everything
about computers.. if he hasn't met one confused about folders, then he doesn't
have the experience to write his article.

------
jwl
Maybe it started with music playlists. My digital music collection is largely
in the same folder structure as it was 15 years ago, but every music player
wants to make a library based on metatags, which in theory makes sense, but
then just adds the problem of giving everything suitable metatags. Building
your own file structure based on your own needs just seems easier and simpler.

~~~
andybak
There's nothing wrong with tags for music libraries - just that ID3 and the
tooling around it sucks - especially genre handling, the artist/performer
distinction and the inability to handle my own arbitrary grouping that doesn't
correspond to any release information.

I love apps that allow me to easily switch between using tags and using my own
folders.

~~~
emilis_info
Can you recommend any of the apps?

~~~
paragraft
The rather excellent Foobar2000 for Windows has a library view that lets you
switch between folder structure and tagged properties (album, artist, genre
etc)

------
w0utert
The original article wasn't very good, but this response is even worse. It
appears the author is lacking any form of creativity to think beyond the idea
that folders are the only paradigm for ordering files that could possibly
work.

In practice, if you forget about system files and such, I'd estimate 9 out of
10 people have all their documents in a single flat folder, which they only
access through their word processor or whatever they use to open them. They
have all their pictures and video in a tool that organizes them into albums
and such without them having to deal with folders. They have all their music
in a program that keeps them in a library somewhere, which they never
manipulate on the file system level. And so on. Or (also very common) they
just dump everything they touch on their computer on the desktop. This is not
because making folders is 'too complex', but because users can't be bothered
to come up with hierarchies to order where there files are 'stored on the file
system' or whatever, they just want to make their changes persistent and be
able to quickly find their files later.

For the vast majority of people, folders are an anochronism. It's not that
they are 'hard' or 'complex', but they are simply not essential, and actually
quite limiting for file management. The whole idea that the artefacts you
create or consume are best structured as a tree really doesn't make a whole
lot of sense. Especially not if you want to have all your data available on
multiple machines which may have wildly different file systems such as
desktops and mobile devices.

This doesn't mean we should all have big piles of files with no ways of
structuring them, but it doesn't mean folders are the epitome of file
management either. A database-like file system with powerful search options
could definitely be much better. From an end-user perspective, organizing
files by the applications they can open them also seems to be a pretty good
idea to me. Attaching metadata and tags to files so you don't have to
superimpose them using a tree-like structure would be a huge improvement.

I'm not saying that what Apple is trying with iOS and now OS X is so great we
should all hail it as the future of file management, but personally I think
they are moving in the right direction. Ideally, end-users should be able to
operate their devices and get to their files without even knowing it has
something as abstract as a 'file system'. Just sit down, get the file you want
using whatever criterium makes the most sense for finding it, manipulate it,
and have the same file available on every other machine. I think this is the
vision Apple has, but it will take lots of time to get there.

Also, people mailing files to themselves to get them on their iOS devices
literally has nothing to do with how the iOS file system works. Folders or no
folders would not make any difference.

~~~
Spooky23
Your thought process is precisely how vendors like Apple are arriving at this
conclusion. The problem with it is that you are assuming that your users are
blithering idiots without any actual work to do.

The oh-so-quaint folder metaphor directly correlates to how humans do things
in the physical world. I put my winter coat in a closet. My winter scarf,
boots, hat and gloves are also in the closet, but in a box on a shelf.

My system may not be the same as yours, but it works for me. Dumping my winter
stuff with all of my clothing on a pile, and affixing a blue tag on it to
represent "winter stuff" isn't improving things. Installing a database-backed
clothing management system like you would find at a dry cleaner in my house
solves my organizational problem, but introduces alot of complexity and
overhead.

Let's be real here. The reason that Apple is doing this is that have had
success in delivering a dumbed-down API that makes their life much easier on
phones, and prevents pesky third party software developers from doing
dangerous things like allowing applications to talk to each other. They've
decided to bring this innovation to the general purpose computer.

~~~
Tooluka
Shoes are simple. But where did you put the backup debit bank card? To the
"finance" stuff? Or to the "plastic card" pile? Where to put spare photos for
documents - near the foreign passport cause you'll surely need both of them
next time? Or to the unsorted photos pile? Where should we put spare screws
from a new shelf - on that shelf or in the toolbox with other screws? Etc.
etc.

This is why directories are getting old - they allow only one tag for a file -
the folder name. New systems, like iTunes and others are introducing concept
of advanced tags - you can find the same file in the Author "dir" in the Genre
"dir" in the Type "dir" etc. They aren't perfect yet but they are being
refined all will be dominant in the future.

~~~
gyom
Which is why it'd be nice if filesystems supported labels. I'd keep the
directory structure, but I want to be able to apply the "2004 vacations" label
on a all files in a given directory. Then you can add other particular labels
to some files.

I don't want to have to manage labels separately for iPhoto, for Picasa and
for all the possible image viewers that I'll use in the future.

~~~
tbourdon
Yes, yes, yes. I've been fighting photo management software for years when all
I want is the ability to tag files.

~~~
josteink
Windows have had that for _years_ now.

But I guess since Apple haven't done it yet, it doesn't exist to hipsters.

------
berryg
Some people can handle directories just fine. But, a lot of people simply do
not grasp the concept. For many, many years I have been trying to explain hard
disks, folders and files to family members. They simply don't understand the
concept. Opening a folder and double clicking on a file to open it and a
program to read the file starts: they do not understand it.

For these ordinary users of computer appliances the iOS way of handling files
is simply a blessing. You use an application to do something, to write a text,
to listen to music, to communicate. Applications that can interact with each
other, will interact with each other. Simple.

For an ordinary computer appliance user it is not necessary to be confronted
with a file system. Just as a lot of other technical details are hidden from
ordinary users.

~~~
ehutch79
maybe they just don't want to learn?

------
goblin89
> The article I'm about to link to, by Oliver Reichenstein, is pretty terrible

Funnily, I liked linked article more (better written, also easier to read).
Although I partially agree, partially would argue with both.

I think hierarchy-less approach, properly designed and implemented, would work
OK for most users. Folders just look like the most basic and generic way for
organizing stuff, which isn't necessarily the best, and probably deserves
optimization for particular use cases.

However, take for example cases when computer is used for production—say, DTP
or video/photo editing. If you take away the freedom to organize files
hierarchically, it would impose certain restrictions on the workflow. The
“genericness” could be an advantage for more complex use cases.

------
rnadna
I wonder if others have scaled back on the "meaningfulness" of file names. I
name a lot of my files (and directories) 01, 02, 03, etc (with suffixes
according to meaning) and then I have a local README file that lists the
contents of each of these.

I find it this scheme handy for scientific work in which the files are often
multiple attempts to solve a problem. It saves me from writing file names like
"solution" and "solution_method2" and "solution_method2_with_bug_fix" etc. The
README format gives me tons of space to write comments (and cross-reference
other work), while the filename, incrementing from version to version, is a
sort of diary stamp.

This works for directories too. I tend to go only 2 directories deep on a
given project. The top level is for the task, e.g. a calculation or a figure
for a paper I'm writing, and the second is for a sequence of approaches to
that task.

With this scheme, I focus on README files and not names in a directory tree.
Colleagues who have tried this have found it weird at first, but then tend to
prefer it to the "informative name" scheme they grew up with.

If databases were more convenient, I could imagine doing all my work with
"flattened" filenames in a single directory. I think that's what apple are
moving toward, but they are thinking of application-specific work, so the
application deals with the databases. I prefer the README/filesystem structure
because it lets me use tools like grep, etc.

------
ThomPete
Intuition is learned.

 _Something is intuitive not because it’s universally understood but because
we have learned the meaning of it from a holistic point of view. This requires
lots and lots of experience and, for that matter, trial and error._

Metaphors are only meaningful in retrospect.

 _Don’t count on the physical-looking button to be intuitive just because it’s
a metaphor from real life. Once you tell someone what a specific element
means, they will most probably understand it, but not because of the metaphor
itself._

There are no Bablefish in UX

 _Designing products and services is like speaking French. Not everyone
understands it. Comprenez-vous? The noob might pick up a word here and there,
but they aren’t, by any metrics, comfortable with participating in the
conversation._

This all leads to the following conclusion:

 _Intuitive interaction is for experts, not for noobs Understanding something
intuitively really means that you understand it holistically. If you
understand it holistically, you can fill in the gaps. This doesn’t mean you
shouldn’t make your design intuitive or improve on it—not at all. Just
understand that you are doing it for the natives._ not for the noobs.

[http://000fff.org/anatomy-of-a-noob-why-your-mom-suck-at-
com...](http://000fff.org/anatomy-of-a-noob-why-your-mom-suck-at-computers/)

------
epo
The article linked to is a witless rant. The article he is reacting to is
actually pretty good.

As is commonly the case with people who don't understand what they are talking
about, the author is confusing policy (I want to organise my stuff) and
mechanism (use folders and sub-folders). What is undeniable is that we need a
coherent way to organise our stuff. What is wrong-headed is assuming that
hierarchical directories are the best, or the only, way to do so.

------
b1daly
Apple's attempts at making "seamless" user experiences can be frustrating,
especially on edge cases. For example, in Garageband instruments are stored in
special files down a ways in a directory tree in Application Support. It
happens that files get corrupted, but access to the file is so abstracted that
the source of the trouble is not apparent, as it is a directory not intended
to be accessed by the user. It's an attempt to hide complexity from the user
but it makes it hard to trouble-shoot, or to perform actions outside of the
expected.

The area that does boggle my mind in terms of a flat structure are complex
multi-media authoring environments. Where different files and types are used
to assemble a larger work.

My main principle as an audio engineer is that I have to know exactly where
each file in the project lives in the FS. If I'm not sure, the scenarios in
which projects, or parts of projects get lost happen more frequently.

Not to mention that a given project uses many files of different types, and
can have 10s or 100s of thousands of files. Automatic file management seems
like a recipe for disaster, especially as it won't work perfectly.

I don't get it.

------
Someone
One opinion, repeated a zillion times, does not make an argument; it makes a
rant.

I see only a few arguments in this text:

\- the author does not think nested hierarchies are difficult. If he added
"for nerds", I would agree with him.

\- the author equates having limited nesting with the 'data silos' situation
on iOS and (from what I read in reviews), in slightly lesser sense on Mac OS X
Mountain Lion.

\- claiming that the mouse is hard to use because it provides "indirect
manipulation". That may seem so, but the human brain is exceptionally good at
transferring motor skills between modalities. For example, anybody who can
write can write with his feet, nose, car, or whatever, and the handwriting
will (except for the quality of fine motor skills) be recognizable as yours
(<http://www.ebaumsworld.com/jokes/read/211551/>)

\- equating having limited nesting with vendor lock-in. Proprietary file
formats are fine for doing that. I do not see why you would need to do
anything more.

~~~
hmmyeah
"the author does not think nested hierarchies are difficult. If he added "for
nerds", I would agree with him."

Imagine you badly need to go to the bathroom, and the only building nearby is
a huge hospital... will all the complexity hidden away in the various
sections, rooms, and the patients themselves, delay your quest for the toilet
even one second?

Also, the brain can only keep a bunch of things in mind at a time,no matter
how they're presented. When complexity crosses the threshold, we group stuff
together. And we also do this with a flat list, in some way or another.
Reality and our concept of it is very deeply nested, but since we only handle
a bunch of abstractions at the same time, that's fine.

With folders, you have something that is explorable. You can _still_ search,
but if you don't have folders to begin with, you can _only_ search -- and
anything you don't think of searching for is either lost forever, or can be
seen only as part of a huuuuuge list.

IMHO it's regression alright, no two ways about it.

------
postfuturist
The article is a bit of a rant, but it resonates deeply with me. The single-
level of nesting is obnoxious. The spotify app allows a flat list of playlists
--just the one level of nesting. Now that I've got a couple hundred albums in
there, it has basically become useless, and I just have to search to find
everything, which is _not_ what I want to do.

Hierarchical structures are how we see the world. Tagging and search is not
sufficient. File systems give us the illusion of a "place" that a file lives.
A single place. Like my socks are in a drawer in my closet, they are always
there. A given music file is always in
/home/steve/Music/<artist>/<album>/track.foo. That's where it lives. I can
find it, even if I have 10,000 albums. My tax documents are in
/home/steve/Documents/personal/taxes/2011/ . They exist there. I can auto-
backup /home/steve/Documents and I know that those documents are safely backed
up. I won't lose those things.

------
abenga
I'm all for any easier file organization system as long as it's portable
between systems, allows a large number of files to be locatable and usable
immediately after being plugged into a system (i.e. without a lengthy indexing
process), and doesn't make it difficult to share files between users in a
network (e.g. a Samba set-up in an office). I don't know if there can be any
such system that doesn't become as "complex" as the current folders-in-folders
way of doing things. Most of the systems I've seen assume that I only access
the files from this device and I'd never need to copy them to external storage
or share them with another user not necessarily using the same kind of system
as I do.

Maybe a hybrid system, like the one being done in GNOME, where you have the
traditional underlying file system present, and a separate indexing program
(GNOME documents) that enables searching by content, context, date modified,
etc would be best.

------
yaix
> Vendor lock-in

Well, duh! Obviously that's what it is about when "apps" don't want to tell
you how they store their data. MS Office has been doing that very successfully
for more than 20 years now. And removing the abillity to actually locate the
data would make it even easier to tie the user to the app and plattform.

------
LinXitoW
I don't think changing the way we structure our files is that bad an idea,
although the iOS version of it isn't really great. Folders are basically a way
of grouping files of a similar topic/concern together. Files can belong to
many topics/concerns, but they can only belong to one folder. I'd really love
it if we evolved the folder concept to a concept of tags, where the
organization is very fluid and dynamic.

Example(example folder structures):

* I could put an anime movie file under /Media/Video/Movies/Anime or /Media/Video/Anime/Movies

* Same for an anime tv show: /Media/Video/shows/Anime or /Media/Video/Anime/shows

If i could tag the anime movie as "Movie" and as "Anime", i could just pick
and choose which way i want to view it:

* All movies?

* All anime movies?

* All anime?

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Google Docs used to do this. Folders weren't really folders, they were tags,
and it was horribly confusing.

~~~
jonhendry
I could see that being confusing.

If something appears in two tag-folders, is it because it has both tags, or
because it is two different versions or copies, with different tags?

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Exactly.

------
muxxa
The giveaway phrase here is:

"... instead of having your own structure, tailor-made for you because you
created it in the first place ..."

Non-geeks don't have the time, interest or inclination to catalogue and curate
these sorts of structures.

The list that the author gives of everyday items that are easy to use
("cupboards, Tupperware, boxes, closets, pockets, wallets") all have the
common property that they are not recursive, and that you can easily figure
out their contents at a glance, something that is impossible to garner by
looking at an opaque list of directories.

While there are some good points here about the problems of files being siloed
in apps on iOs, the directory structure is a ux disaster.

~~~
hmmyeah
> "Non-geeks don't have the time, interest or inclination to catalogue and
> curate these sorts of structures."

Define non-geek then. Unless you mean "people who have too few items to need
organization", I think that's wrong. I've met plenty of not super bright
people who had for example a perfectly organized garage or apartment. I dare
say it has nothing to do with geekyness. There's even tidy kids.. they cannot
even program a computer, they cannot reach the cookie jar like I can, but they
can and do organize the stuff they care about, in ways they care about.

> "The list that the author gives of everyday items that are easy to use
> ("cupboards, Tupperware, boxes, closets, pockets, wallets") all have the
> common property that they are not recursive"

What? You can put tupperware into a box, and put that into the cupboard.
Usually, this is located in a house which is located in a street, which is in
a city. And so on. The levels of nesting, nobody counted them.. but most
everybody navigates them just fine.

~~~
lovskogen
Geeks = super bright people? Nice pat on our backs. I just came to say that
you can put tupperware into a box, but I think most of the time, people just
put stuff in one box. Your street and city metaphor seems out of place in this
discussion.

~~~
hmmyeah
"Geeks = super bright people? Nice pat on our backs."

Don't put words in my mouth. "not super bright" is an euphemism for, uhm,
simple people. Since I don't know how the poster I replied to defines geeks, I
simply took an example from people I know that are 100% not geeks by their
definition, whatever it may be.

"Your street and city metaphor seems out of place in this discussion."

How so? To me it seems like pretending people can only understand one level of
hierarchy flies flat in the face of daily experience. You pretend the
tupperware exists in isolation, it doesn't.

------
gizmo686
I think android has the approach to filesystems write. Each app has there own
dedicated folder for internal usage and is hidden from the user (actually, the
user cannot access it at all unless the specific app provides a method because
of sandboxing, but that is a different issue). There is also a file structure
where apps can read and write any data that the user might want to share
between apps, devices. By convention, the files are organized either by type
(image) or by app, however when the user wants to move them, or open them with
a different program, this option is left available.

------
it
It's not so much that folders are counter-intuitive. The problem with them is
that they impose a single, arbitrary structure on files that could be
organized in many different ways. For example, you could have folders like
AllMyImages/ or AllMyCatImages/ or CatImagesJuly2012/ but there's no way to
anticipate what will be the most useful directory structure for all future
situations. It would be more flexible and useful to have indexes over the
files that let you dynamically organize your content according to attributes
such as contains-cats, date, is-image, author, etc.

------
lubujackson
One of the many reasons to hate Apple. I don't understand why supposed geeks
can get behind a company that willfully puts draconian protections to keep you
from using a computer like a computer. No USB port? No useable FILE SYSTEM?
Emailing files is a pathetic hack for a poorly designed device. And
"simplicity" is not a saving grace, there is NO REASON to not allow this sort
of functionality except to force everyone to use horrible iTunes. People can
defend Apple all they want, but no one can give me a valid user-centric reason
for those decisions.

------
andyjohnson0
To me, this is about choice.

If a computer has a file system that is accessible to the user and supports
files and hierarchical directories, then users can choose to use it or not. If
they want to use directory hierarchies then they can. Or if they want to store
all their files in one place and rely on applications to present filtered
views or search (not necessarily even in terms of files) then they can.

If the file system is not accessible or doesn't support hierarchical
directories then you have no choice. This is not an option that interests me.

------
jpalomaki
If OS vendor would like to switch to using metadata or tags to organize
documents, allowing just two level directory structure could be the first
step.

Documents in root would end up having no tags at all and the folder name would
be used as the tag for those stored in folders. Obviously you could also do
this with complex directory structures, but then the tags would become quite
long.

Metadata/tag based systems don't necessary exclude the complex folder
structures as we have seen but having both can make things complicated.

------
damian2000
I think that isolating data and applications into their own directory on a PC
makes total sense.

But there was something that I read to do with organizing your email inbox
into folders which is sort of related. A study found that people who organise
their inbox into multiple sub-folders don't get any benefit at all compared to
those that have just one big inbox; when they want to find something, they
just sort by 'from', 'date', 'subject' or do a find text.

~~~
ballooney

      I think that isolating data and applications into 
      their own directory on a PC makes total sense.
    

Only if you're starting from a position where there is only one kind of
application to handle one kind of data. But as a counter example to that, the
entire philosophical underpinning on unix is that stuff should be plain text
so it can be easily handed between different programs.

I can just imagine the day when I try and pipe the output of one command into
another and an ascii paperclip pops up in my cli to scold me for trying to use
cat's 'data' with uniq, or something. I shall keep a cyanide pill handy in my
desk drawer for such an occasion.

------
kraemate
I dont want applications to be file-managers and hiding where my files really
are. Files+directories is a very intuitive, powerful, and low-abstraction
concept --- directories and files correspond directly to inodes. Thus the
file-system and users' view of files is the same. Tagging etc can easily be
accomplished by using extended attributes (like in the BeOS Filesystem), but
apparently no one wants to use extended attributes.

------
ehutch79
i would like to see the anti-directory people put forth a basic cms that works
this way. everything is tagged, no folders. or however they're saying they
want it to work.

then give this to an enterprise. hell PAY them to use it. see what the results
are.

since you're all ui/ux experts 'they're using it wrong' will be an
unacceptable response to anything that happens.

------
jack-r-abbit
So... Apple doesn't want people to write code on their OS anymore? I can't
think of many languages that would not suffer from a lack of folders. I don't
care about all the other crap being discussed. There will always be people
that have a hard time with XYZ.

------
lovskogen
There seems to be alot of the comments here pointing out that the users are
dumb, or they "just have to learn" – really? Aren't we the ones that should
design solutions that are easy to understand, and easy to use?

~~~
cabirum
It's a single basic thing users absolutely must learn. It's a foundation
designers use to build their solutions upon. Every tool requires some prior
knowledge to use it. You cannot use a spoon until you learned how to use it.

Hierarchical structures are natural to humans. Books with volumes and
chapters, organizational structures, administrative hierarchies, etc, etc.

I defy the idea of people who "don't get" directory structure. It.. just
cannot be real.

------
blt
I come across a great counter-example to directory structures every day. I
make 32-bit, 64-bit, debug, and release builds of my product. How do I
organize them in a tree? Which distinction is "higher-level"?

------
rynes
I read somewhere that Apple uses hard links to directories for time machine.

~~~
epo
It is one way to avoid storing duplicates, which is important for a versioned
backup system. If you're smart enough to avoid loops then it is a reasonable
thing to do.

------
robomartin
There's a huge difference here between Mom, Dad and Uncle Fester using a
computer and professional or business users.

The first set of users can be either lazy or oblivious to the idea of
organizing their data --directories or databases, it doesn't matter. It's a
pile-o-stuff and they really don't think far beyond that. For this class of
users making it super-simple is a good idea. You sort of have to protect them
from themselves.

I know doctors who have absolutely no clue as to where their stuff is stored
and have zero interest in investing fifteen minutes to learn the basics of
directory structures and file management. Zero.

The second set of users, the pro's and business users --to generalize-- are a
different story.

Take the case of a company that designs physical products. Each project is
likely to live inside a directory structure segregating and organizing areas
or work such as: mechanical design, schematic, pcb layout, bill of materials,
design calculations, documentation, embedded firmware, FPGA code, cost
calculations, marketing materials, packaging design, manufacturing,
specifications, etc. In turn, each of these categories will rightly have its
own subdirectory structures when and where it makes sense.

The above per-product directory structure is also likely to be completely
replicated as product releases and revisions require. Not everything can be
handled by Git-type version control systems. In fact, in product design there
are very good arguments for complete design duplication during iterations or
to mark release (as shipped) configurations. Different subject.

This second use case cannot be served well with the iOS app-centric sand-boxed
model. A product directory structure with thousands of files can have a number
of applications access these files. There will not be a one-to-one correlation
between applications and a lot of the files in the design.

Similar use cases can be found in other businesses where the end-product might
not be a physical product design. Research projects, financial reports,
publications and other work product is likely to require a number of different
file types that may or may not come together to form a single deliverable.

Again, the iOS sand-boxed model fails to support this use case because it
forces a per-file-type or per-application separation of files and does not
permit or provide the ability to organize disparate file types into projects
according to context.

Put another way: If you are Lockheed you don't want the F-16 and F-117
mechanical design files mashed together into one folder simply because the
same CAD system is used to open then. You want them to live within their
corresponding project stores and within a sensible directory structure that
organizes work according to relevant criteria. For example, the wing
mechanical design directory might also contain a set of directories with
aerodynamics data whereas the mechanical design directory for the seat has not
need for such data.

I see that the Windows approach seems to work well for the first type of user.
If applications use it correctly (some don't) everything gets dumped into "My
Documents" and other predefined folders. Users would occasionally add sub-
folders of their own.

The second set of users generally has the presence of mind and knowledge to
"roll their own". Using my own patterns as an example, I don't think I own a
single computer (Mac or PC) that does not have a separate "Data" drive where
projects are stored within their own directory structures and according to
their own needs.

There's another twist to this, which is a far less common use case: I happen
to run more than one business. There's zero justification for my Photoshop
files from business #1 to be stored in the same location as those of business
#2 on the same computer. Each business has its own root directory from which
to organize the corresponding files.

~~~
bornhuetter
I couldn't agree with this more.

In a corporate environment it would be an absolute nightmare to organise files
without a well maintained hierarchical directory structure. Folders often need
to contain files that are used in a variety of programs (spreadsheets, text
documents, presentations), so trying to tie the directories and files to each
application would ruin this system.

It would also be a disaster for sharing files with other people. If someone
gives me a usb stick with 1000 badly named files, with 1 level of folders –
what do I do? If I dump them in directly with mine, it’s a huge mess. And I
can’t nest it inside a folder.

I can see many disadvantages to taking away folders, and can’t think of a
single benefit to me.

------
rogerchucker
Great topic and one that has been bothering me. Can somebody answer the
following question - when I have a PDF opened in app-1 in my iOS device and
there is an export/share button in that app which allows me to open that PDF
in app-2, does that sharing end up creating two copies of my PDF on my device?
If yes, then isn't this app-as-a-silo model a little inefficient?

------
rogerchucker
I think computer scientists need data points before making proclamations like
"most people don't like folders".

~~~
super_mario
Most computer scientists are fuming with rage when sociology majors pushing
strings at Apple are telling them to hide the filesystem from the users.

------
powertower
> I have honestly never seen a single person have any issues with directories,
> nested or no...

This is completely off. I've seen people not being able to "get" the concept
of folders and files even after months of demonstrations... They simply
forget, don't understand, can't use. Especially in the context of drives,
devices, memory cards, etc.

And those people are large in numbers, the non-computer crowd. Probably at
least 30% of the general population.

