This week I read two blog posts that deal with the same issue: The metaphorical concept of files in operating systems. And why they suck.
David Shoemaker and John Perry wrote the posts I refer to, and you owe it to yourself to read them.
In short, John Perry wrote about horizontal vs. vertical organizers. He is a horizontal organizer that likes to have everything on the table at once. That way he gains an overview with everything in sight. Vertical organizers can file anything in a cabinet and take it out when they need it again. A terrible method, if you ask me – I tend to be horizontally organized as well.
But my operating system of choice disagrees with me. The desktop metaphor seems to derive from vertical organizers’ idea of filing documents in folders and cabinets. It is directly converted to how Windows, Linux (in general) and OS X handle information. Now, Google has released a beta version of Chrome OS that hopefully kicks off the end of the regime of OSs being structured for the horizontally-focused. With Chrome OS, documents are stored in Google Docs, pictures in Picasa, emails in Gmail etc.
Obviously, the “items” (text documents, pictures and emails) are still stored in a database, but for the user, the real strength comes in archiving these items with metadata wrapped around them. No need to scan for the right email – just search for it. No need to figure out in which document you wrote about “football” – just search for it. Want to find your dad in a picture? The face recognition makes sure you can search for it (well, at least that’s how it should/will be).
David Shoemaker points out that within OS X, the developers form Apple have a slight disagreement on how to approach files vs. items. iTunes and iPhoto treats what you put into them as items that you can manage, whereas iWork handles documents and files.
Today, I’ve wiped my hard disk and reinstalled OS X. I do this every now and then to clean out all the junk I tend to gather. It’s also a way for me to rethink how I work with my computer and which apps are essential to me. One thing I noticed this time, is that I need something like iTunes/iPhoto for my pdf-files. Previously, I’ve used Evernote, but it’s unstable and slow, so I’m looking for something that can help sort my documents horizontally, not vertically. Papers looks interesting, but is there anything better out there?
It’s a small step towards a new way of working with information, and I can’t wait for Apple to start treating textual information as items, not documents.