[bodo_leer]

I can totally agree. The "folder" file structure is a tree structure. This is easily understood if you have a CS background, but for new computer users it could be a huge mental step if try to explain that you can stack folders endlessly into another.

Additionally you have to think in terms of hierarchies instead of groups to make a folder structure work you. Something like: Media > Pictures > 2012 > .....

It seems to me that Apple was never a Fan of folder structures. Just look at the way iPhoto or iTunes work. They basically are a clients to your media library.

I assume the main reason this works is because pictures and audio files already have a fairly big amount of meta data like music genre or location data.

A scenario where I can find all I worked on in the office yesterday wouldn't be that bad.

[rogerchucker]

Jesus Christ, iPhoto lock-in is one of the most scummy things Apple has ever done. You don't have to be a CS student to feel the need to easily move a bunch of photos easily from your local computer to an external storage device or even upload in batch to something like picasa. By completely blocking the user from the directory structure, Apple made sure people would share the iPhoto albums only with a select few that Apple had chosen for us.

[w0utert]

That's just pure BS. If you want to get your photo's out of iPhoto, all you have to do is select them, and drag them to wherever you want to have them.

If anything, iPhoto is the poster child for applications that do not need hierarchical file systems. Sometimes I want to have all photo's for a certain event, sometimes I want all photo's that are less than a year old, sometimes I want all photo's that have my cat on them, and so on. How does a tree-like organization of pictures facilitate making subselections like that?

You are just taking your allergy to applications that manage your files in ways that are incompatible with you messing around on the file system, and making an argument in favor of hierarchical file systems out of it.

[samastur]

Wanting to access my photos doesn't mean I want to copy them elsewhere. Most of the time I want them to stay where they are, just use them with a different app.

I'm not saying nested folders fit everyone (although my anecdotal experience differs greatly from yours), but you don't have to be a geek or an old-timer to appreciate that your data is not tightly coupled to an app.

I don't know enough about new approach Apple has taken to comment directly upon it (yet). I do think original article was crap (and this one isn't great either).

[ethermal]

But having to use the app to manage files, is a whole new paradigm that someone has to learn which is exactly what people are trying to avoid in the first place. So either teach one paradigm to a new user and stick to it (aka using the file system) or application specific paradigm (aka use iphoto to manage photos, itunes for music files, etc). So depending on how good you are at controlling the application usage from one app to another you end up having to learn each applications way of doing things instead of learning one way of doing things and using that throughout.

As a developer and previous life as IT support I fully support the teaching the file system paradigm because it works better overall.

All of the tag resorting you are doing within iphoto can and is done rather easily within the file system as well so what has that added other then more complexity?

[bodo_leer]

Both task can easily be achieved. Just select and drag them out of the app into any folder.

I don't like everything about iPhoto (it's database design is rather monolithic and not build for user that have many storage devices that are not always plugged in like external hard drives)

But I wanted to say: "hey, look here! We are already managing many files without folders."