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To play devil's advocate for a minute: One possibility is that the most useful method of organizing data is necessarily different for each application. There a

To play devil's advocate for a minute: One possibility is that the most useful method of organizing data is necessarily different for each application. There are even applications for which hierarchical organization is entirely appropriate at the UI level: An obvious example is an outliner. And it's not a coincidence that our filesystem UIs have little icons of file-cabinet drawers and file folders: The real world features file cabinets and folders, and people have traditionally been able to make sense of those, hierarchy and all... in a context which naturally fits into a hierarchical scheme. It's worth asking whether the cardinal sin of the hierarchical file system isn't the fact that hierarchical is innately confusing, but that for thirty years and more programmers have labored to fit non-hierarchical problems into a hierarchical paradigm, often in totally unnatural ways. Replacing that One True Paradigm with another One True Paradigm might just prolong the fundamental mistake.

LukasMathis 17y ago
That's a great point. I certainly think applications should have the freedom to offer their own custom view of the user's data (as you point out, even hierarchical views, if that makes sense in their context - for example, it makes sense for MP3 players, where there is a natural hierarchy along the lines of Band -> Album -> Song), but I also think Apple should show some leadership here, both on a UI level, as well as on a technical level (for synchronization, versioning and similar features).
glhaynes 17y ago
I agree. For certain applications, strongly hierarchical organization is appropriate. I think it's probably best if they're separate per-application hierarchies. The One Tree file system model is really aesthetically appealing to us hierarchically-structured thinkers, but most people don't seem to think that way. Interesting to note how it's done on the iPad: Photos, for example, are stored in a hierarchy (in certain views at least; there's not a strong sense that the "true" scheme they're stored in is an hierarchical one), but no folder metaphor is used. It's just stacks of images. Likewise, the "folders" in OS 4.0 are that in name and function only. They are represented more like the stacks of photos, though the objects "in" them are shown as tiled (with a linear view when tapped, for easier picking) rather than overlapping, though, in that case. But an opaque container isn't used. So, in both cases, the objects are collected without the container being drawn attention to. This may limit the number of levels of hierarchy that are possible (stacks of photos within stacks of photos would break the metaphor... not that people put real-life folders within folders very often), but most users don't like deep hierarchies anyway, and the extra hierarchy of objects being stored "within" apps helps mitigate that as well as segregate things somewhat naturally by type. Of course certain tasks will always require deep, complex hierarchies.
macrael 17y ago
Real world filing cabinets are not infinitely hierarchical, they are very flat. I don't think I've ever seen someone use a filing cabinet with nested folders. You have one list of alphabetized folders with the files directly in it. In this way I think the current "folders" solution in the home screen more closely matches what people expect. When you have to drill down through more than a few levels of hierarchy to get to what they want, it becomes confusing to keep track of, especially because folders create groups of arbitrary types so everyone has to build their own hierarchical system for each type of data. So while my nested folders for photos represents year/month/event my nested folders in my music library mean artist/album and my Documents folder is a mess where I try and make up groups of things I will remember again later. "does this piece of writing belong in my Essay folder or in my Journal folder?" Who can say? and if I pick one now, what's to say when I go looking for it later I might not categorize it differently? Things like iPhoto make those decisions for you, just add your pictures to it and it will make you group them as an event, and that is all you have to do. iPhoto actually lets you look for photos in several different ways then: hierarchically by year/month/event, event in overall order, by who is in the picture, or where it was taken. That is a lot of flexibility that lets me search for a photo in whatever way I'm thinking about it in the moment, rather than having to search for a file based on however I originally decided to organize them on the file system. A straight hierarchical file system is pretty limiting: it only allows you to find files based on one organizational method. That's why search is becoming so useful and why tagging seemed like such a good idea. It would be great if we could find out what the best way for me to keep track of my writing is without me having to think about how it is structured on disk. So I guess what I am trying to say is that I agree with you that we need different organizational methods for different pieces of data, and that I think nested "folders" is going to be the right solution very rarely. And I agree with Lukas that there needs to be a lot of work done to help people share files and move files to and from the iPad easily.

LukasMathis 17y ago

That's a great point. I certainly think applications should have the freedom to offer their own custom view of the user's data (as you point out, even hierarchical views, if that makes sense in their context - for example, it makes sense for MP3 players, where there is a natural hierarchy along the lines of Band -> Album -> Song), but I also think Apple should show some leadership here, both on a UI level, as well as on a technical level (for synchronization, versioning and similar features).

glhaynes 17y ago

I agree. For certain applications, strongly hierarchical organization is appropriate. I think it's probably best if they're separate per-application hierarchies. The One Tree file system model is really aesthetically appealing to us hierarchically-structured thinkers, but most people don't seem to think that way. Interesting to note how it's done on the iPad: Photos, for example, are stored in a hierarchy (in certain views at least; there's not a strong sense that the "true" scheme they're stored in is an hierarchical one), but no folder metaphor is used. It's just stacks of images. Likewise, the "folders" in OS 4.0 are that in name and function only. They are represented more like the stacks of photos, though the objects "in" them are shown as tiled (with a linear view when tapped, for easier picking) rather than overlapping, though, in that case. But an opaque container isn't used. So, in both cases, the objects are collected without the container being drawn attention to. This may limit the number of levels of hierarchy that are possible (stacks of photos within stacks of photos would break the metaphor... not that people put real-life folders within folders very often), but most users don't like deep hierarchies anyway, and the extra hierarchy of objects being stored "within" apps helps mitigate that as well as segregate things somewhat naturally by type. Of course certain tasks will always require deep, complex hierarchies.

macrael 17y ago

Real world filing cabinets are not infinitely hierarchical, they are very flat. I don't think I've ever seen someone use a filing cabinet with nested folders. You have one list of alphabetized folders with the files directly in it. In this way I think the current "folders" solution in the home screen more closely matches what people expect. When you have to drill down through more than a few levels of hierarchy to get to what they want, it becomes confusing to keep track of, especially because folders create groups of arbitrary types so everyone has to build their own hierarchical system for each type of data. So while my nested folders for photos represents year/month/event my nested folders in my music library mean artist/album and my Documents folder is a mess where I try and make up groups of things I will remember again later. "does this piece of writing belong in my Essay folder or in my Journal folder?" Who can say? and if I pick one now, what's to say when I go looking for it later I might not categorize it differently? Things like iPhoto make those decisions for you, just add your pictures to it and it will make you group them as an event, and that is all you have to do. iPhoto actually lets you look for photos in several different ways then: hierarchically by year/month/event, event in overall order, by who is in the picture, or where it was taken. That is a lot of flexibility that lets me search for a photo in whatever way I'm thinking about it in the moment, rather than having to search for a file based on however I originally decided to organize them on the file system. A straight hierarchical file system is pretty limiting: it only allows you to find files based on one organizational method. That's why search is becoming so useful and why tagging seemed like such a good idea. It would be great if we could find out what the best way for me to keep track of my writing is without me having to think about how it is structured on disk. So I guess what I am trying to say is that I agree with you that we need different organizational methods for different pieces of data, and that I think nested "folders" is going to be the right solution very rarely. And I agree with Lukas that there needs to be a lot of work done to help people share files and move files to and from the iPad easily.