On File Management in OS X
Lukas Mathis’ Mac OS X Lion commentary is among the best i’ve read and covers pretty much all the bases, but one point in particular stuck out to me:
By now, it seems obvious that Apple isn’t interested in rethinking the Finder. Instead, the goal seems to be to de-emphasize it. Thus, Launchpad, a home screen for the Mac. I suspect that Apple wants people to use Launchpad as their default way of accessing their Macs, rather than the Finder. I further suspect that Apple would like it if applications took over management of their own files, similar to how iPad apps do this.
Which strikes me as a somewhat terrible thing to do. Don’t get me wrong, the Launchpad seems like a good idea and a useful addition to the Dock, but just because Apple decided to completely ignore the daunting challenge of rethinking file management in iOS doesn’t mean this problem is solved. Look no further than the horrendous state of file management in Apple’s own iWork apps for iPad for proof that what we now have in iOS is by no means adequate or satisfactory. File management is one of the cornerstones of creating your own inter-application workflows in personal computing, and defining somewhat efficient workflows is an area where the iPad is still lacking. I’d say the dire limitations on moving data from one application to another is what’s holding the iPad back as a proper work machine. I’d be happy with any solution that solves this problem without resorting to the traditional files & folders model, but just pretending this problem doesn’t exist won’t cut it.
