I guess we'll have to see how this holds up: Usually the problems arise not from one's own folder structure (most people know their way around what they've created) but when working together in someone else's structure. Does this approach solve that problem?
Mountain Lion's new file system
31–40 of 48 posts
Re: Mountain Lion's new file system
#32Is it a symptom of the fact that he believes himself to be an expert on the subject that he enjoys using the term "file system" over and over in a way that goes against 50 years or more of common usage? Or was it just link bait for those of us who thought there might be some new HFS+ implementation?
Re: Mountain Lion's new file system
#33> Folders are not a feature that beginners muddle through but pro users require. No one can deal with deep folder structures. Our brain is simply not built for them.
This is ridiculous. I have computer files I've produced from over the past 20 years. As time goes by, I continually archive them in a big old hierarchical folder called "Archive". Broken down my life phase, school year, project, etc. Without folders-inside-of-folders that whole system would be a mess.
Or, programming projects. How can you even imagine organizing your stylesheets, plugins, libraries, components, endpoints, controllers, etc. without folders?
I'm sorry, but throwing away hierarchical folders completely is a monumentally stupid thing to advocate. Beginners might be better off without them, but pro users absolutely require them.
And our brain is most certainly built for them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_palace
Now, I'd love to have tags as well, but "keep your hands off my folders!" :)
Re: Mountain Lion's new file system
#34Is it a symptom of the fact that he believes himself to be an expert on the subject that he enjoys using the term "file system" over and over in a way that goes against 50 years or more of common usage? Or was it just link bait for those of us who thought there might be some new HFS+ implementation?
I started reading the article expecting to find some sort of description for a new file system and couple of paragraphs in I discovered that it reads like the how to frame yourself as a opinionated clueless twit manual of the year, I am going with link bait. Priceless link bait.
Re: Mountain Lion's new file system
#35When is someone in charge of such things for an OS vendor going to realize that for any of "my" documents, what I really want is to tag them?
I would jettison every piece of computing hardware I own right now and switch to the first device that would let me add (and search) tags in file metadata.
The internet and need to transfer files between systems killed any concept of this sort of thing remaining working.
The AmigaOS had it decades ago. Making it work when transferring a file to different OS's or even between the same OS using standard protocols makes it a really hard problem.
Re: Mountain Lion's new file system
#36This is bullshit, in a lot of ways.
1) This isn't a file system. It's a file structure.
2) Presumably I can still make directories inside of other directories if I want to, right? Given that this isn't an actual "new file system", they can't stop me, right? This was totally unanswered by the article.
3) If they actually prevent heirarchical file structure, can OSX still be called Unix? I think you need root, /usr, /dev, /etc, et cetera.
4) In all my years of dealing with noobs, I've never seen anyone flummoxed by a heirarchical file setup. Yeah, when they first start out, many people open files by clicking the program and choosing "open". But it usually isn't long before they want to start transfering files between devices, folders and programs. And if you need to do anything like that, you need a file browser and heirarchical structure.
I guess I've read it enough to believe it, but I can't. How can computer professionals actually suggest it should be like this? For everyone and not just some training wheels I can take off?
Re: Mountain Lion's new file system
#37I couldn't get past this part: Even geeks can’t handle folders in folders Hierarchical file systems weren't invented because it was ancient times and they were the easiest thing to produce. Hierarchical file systems were invented because they are a really, really good paradigm for storing and retrieving hierarchical data - which I strongly believe is still the case for the majority of files. I didn't read further in…
> Hierarchical file systems weren't invented because it was ancient times and they were the easiest thing to produce. Correct. They were invented because it was just past the middle of the 20th century, and they were the best organization mechanism for the resources available. They're also very robust, versatile, and wonderful in innumerable ways, especially for the audience at the time. Unfortunately, they're not th…
Search is the opposite of an organization tool. It's a tool that allow users to avoid being organized.
Re: Mountain Lion's new file system
#38This argument does not make sense at all. Almost everything we do or own in the real world is based on one form of hierarchy or another. Work (CEO > Executive > etc.), Home (Parents > Old Siblings > You > etc), House (House itself > rooms > closets in a room, etc.) These are not just labels and there is nothing geeky about them either. They imply a certain order or sequence of things that can not just be moved around. If there is one thing that we as people are good at, it must be hierarchies.
Tags on the other hand do not imply order of things. They are more about how you'd describe or how you relate to these things. For example you can have a 'favorite' tag and apply it both to your sibling as in 'your favorite sibling' and one of your closet as in 'your favorite closet in your room'. It says nothing about the order of these things just that your like them. Also, tags can be somewhat temporal as opposed to hierarchies. For example if we take a folders and files example, I can have a top level folder called projects which contains sub-folder for each project I've ever worked on. In each of these sub-folders I can then store the project-specific files. I can use 'current' tag to tag the project I'm currently working on. When I finish this project and get another project, I then remove the 'current' tag from the just finished project and move it to the new project leaving the hierarchy intact.
The point is not to use folders when you need tags or use tags when folders are required. The best files system would be the one that allows you to use both as situation demands.
Re: Mountain Lion's new file system
#39> We are the people that put salt and pepper on the pizza before trying it, because we just know best. Salt and pepper... on pizza ? Is that a thing?
I put pepper on pizza. If you have meat or cheese on your pizza, adding salt is just too much (for me).
Re: Mountain Lion's new file system
#40For some reason I think the author is being overly wordy. The point if I understand it, is that Apple is once again moving OSX towards iOS by switching from a strict folder based filesystem to an App structured file system (from the user's point of view). This allows people to find content and files more easily because they will always be where they left them. In the app that uses them.
That works fine until you want to open a file with several different applications. For example, you might want to open an html file with several different web browsers and a text editor.