I think the problem is Finder long ago move away from spacial interface to a browser interface. Since the move wasn't very clear-cut it's now just bad at rememb

I think the problem is Finder long ago move away from spacial interface to a browser interface. Since the move wasn't very clear-cut it's now just bad at remembering position and layout. Not to mention those things aren't very useful on a completely different computer that would have a different resolution and screen layout. I think the data would be just fine stored as metadata on the directory or a centralized database that wasn't persistent between computers and the disruption would be minimal. Spotlight comments, which Finder reads from DS_Store, is also written to extended attributes. It just isn't read from there. Trash stores each file's previous folder in DS_Store, which could be problematic on a different computer (and nobody would expect that to persist).