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![[F]](/Images/i7/site.gif) TidBITS  TidBITS TidBITS Talk
How Might Smart Folders Change the Way We Work?![[Chilstrom, David]](/webx/?31@@306e9c1c@2) David Chilstrom - 08:52am Mar 25, 2005 PSTI believe that OS X 10.4 represents something of a watershed for the Macintosh. While OS X has certainly altered the Mac experience, with the possible exception of Exposé, we haven't seen all that much in the way of revolutionary enhancements to the user interface. Smart Folders are one of the elements in Tiger that, I believe, will have a much bigger impact on Mac users than we might currently think. On the surface, Smart Folders are little more than saved queries, a feature that Sherlock had years ago. But look a little deeper, and you may see something that can radically change the way we relate to files. In our typical navigation of the Mac interface, via the Finder or file dialogs, where a file was last saved, copied or moved to is the paramount attribute that we relate to. Smart Folders take a sledge hammer to this spatially dominant relationship with the file system, and promote the relational, properties and chronological attributes of files (the who, what and when of them) to an equal footing with where a file happens to reside in the virtual landscape of the user interface. To confess my own bias here, I have longed for some time to be rid of the tedium of managing files and folders manually via the Finder. I'm a doctor, not a file clerk, dammit. My dream filesystem is to dump all of my files into a bin, and to let the elves and fairies in the OS do the sorting for me. Smart folders might just be the answer to my prayers. Heretofore, a central canon of the Mac interface is that a file can exist in only one place at a time, with the exception of those evanescent instances when a file query is run and a file appears in a listing with others, stripped out of its locational context. Smart folders upset the spatial supremacy of the file system interface, by making the multiple representation of a file's location in time, space, relation and properties a standard fixture of the interface. With Tiger, you can kiss the spatial metaphor goodbye as the dominant paradigm for representing the Mac filesystem. I believe this is a good thing, in that those people who have difficulty grasping the geography of the file system, will have alternate ways of locating files according to their own perceptual bias. One of my most often used navigational aids is the "Open Recent" command, so I expect that time focused Smart Folders will be especially important to me. Another feature of Smart Folders, that I find quite appealing, is the ability to cross reference files, so that a document may be easily located based on whatever attribute presently comes to mind. Images present a particular challenge in this regard, as they may be categorized according to multiple elements in the picture, such as "people, beach, volleyball, dogs, vacation" and so on. Unfortunately, the popular photo manager iPhoto, besides being antagonistic to the Finder, appears to be oblivious to Spotlight, so that all of those keywords and organization you've so diligently undertaken in iPhoto will remain opaque to Spotlight's penetrating gaze. I hope I'm wrong about this, or that a remedy is in the works, but I see nothing in Apple's Spotlight documentation to indicate that it can access iPhoto's proprietary data format. Spotlight overall, represents a big step forward in the usability of the Mac interface, while Smart Folders let us each play to our own perceptual strengths in managing files and documents within the virtual world of OS X.
kirklists (apparently)
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Mar 28, 2005 10:18 am
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Re: How Might Smart Folders Change the Way We Work?
On 3/25/05 4:52 PM, "David Chilstrom" <web  livingpresence.biz> wrote:
> I believe that OS X 10.4 represents something of a watershed for the
> Macintosh. While OS X has certainly altered the Mac experience, with the
> possible exception of Exposé, we haven't seen all that much in the way of
> revolutionary enhancements to the user interface. Smart Folders are one of the
> elements in Tiger that, I believe, will have a much bigger impact on Mac users
> than we might currently think. On the surface, Smart Folders are little more
> than saved queries, a feature that Sherlock had years ago. But look a little
> deeper, and you may see something that can radically change the way we relate
> to files.
My feeling exactly!
> In our typical navigation of the Mac interface, via the Finder or file
> dialogs, where a file was last saved, copied or moved to is the paramount
> attribute that we relate to. Smart Folders take a sledge hammer to this
> spatially dominant relationship with the file system, and promote the
> relational, properties and chronological attributes of files (the who, what
> and when of them) to an equal footing with where a file happens to reside in
> the virtual landscape of the user interface.
Yes, it could be like looking for files with your own personal Google,
since, as far as I know, smart folders allow you to use very detailed search
criteria.
> To confess my own bias here, I have longed for some time to be rid of the
> tedium of managing files and folders manually via the Finder. I'm a doctor,
> not a file clerk, dammit. My dream filesystem is to dump all of my files into
> a bin, and to let the elves and fairies in the OS do the sorting for me. Smart
> folders might just be the answer to my prayers.
That and Spotlight. TidBITS' Matt Neuberg has long been searching for the
holy grail of "snippet-keepers". As Spotlight has been presented, it's
exactly what's needed - just dump your files anyplace and search for
anything - keywords, content, or file names. Reminds me of Nisus'
Mailkeeper, one of those great programs I'd really like to have.
Some time ago, I started fooling around with the idea of using a shell
script to dump notes in a Notes folder, then searching them with grep.
Spotlight should be able to do the same thing, but easier and faster.
> Spotlight overall, represents a big step forward in the usability of the Mac
> interface, while Smart Folders let us each play to our own perceptual
> strengths in managing files and documents within the virtual world of OS X.
Yes, and I will predict that Spotlight is much more than the biggest thing
in the Mac since the Finder; I think that if people grok the concept, it
will truly change the way we interact with computers, much along the way you
mention.
Kirk
Author of: The Mac OS X Command Line: Unix Under the Hood
- - - - - -
Read my blog: Kirkville -- http://www.mcelhearn.com
Musings, Opinion and Miscellanea, on Macs, iPods and more
Kirk McElhearn | Chemin de la Lauze | 05600 Guillestre | France
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David Chilstrom
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Mar 28, 2005 10:18 am
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Re: How Might Smart Folders Change the Way We Work?
In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I have no inside information on Tiger, nor have I received a sneak peak at the OS from a developer friend breaking his oath to Apple. All I know about Tiger, is what I've read on the web, mostly from Apple's publicly available documents online. If any of you have inside information on Tiger, please don't share it in this thread. Send any hot dope you may have on the striped one to freenickcarelli friends-of-nick.com ;-) [And let's not start deducing from the lack of information that something is missing. I don't mind people talking about how they might use smart folders, but I'm really uninterested in speculation about how Tiger will work with the actual release date coming within the next few months. -Adam]
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Ashish Ranpura
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Mar 28, 2005 10:18 am
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Re: How Might Smart Folders Change the Way We Work?
What an interesting topic, David!
"Smart" groupings in iPhoto and iTunes have changed my organizational system in one important respect: I am more careful about naming files than I used to be. So instead of labelling a photograph "London 11" I might write "LondonSisterPark" -- which will automatically be filed in my "family" album as well as my "vacation" album (rules for those two albums search for keywords in the file name). Naming files by hand is already a bit cumbersome, and David, I can't see either you or I being motivated to enter metadata more rigorously than this.
On another front, I've found that Launchbar goes a long way towards shattering the spatial metaphor of the Finder. Since Launchbar lets me rapidly call up any file on the system with just a few keystrokes, I tend to dump all my files into a few broadly defined folders and leave it at that. Again, I provide useful metadata by carefully naming the files.
So my viewpoint is that while "smart" organizational systems substantially improve computer useability, they remain dependent on manually generated metadata (even if it's just the file name).
Maybe the next step is to get rid of file names altogether, and instead use a string of metadata to identify files. The user would describe a file with anything from a word to a phrase to a paragraph, and that text would be translated into a numerical "filecode" used by the internal filing system. Long file names are already a step in this direction -- why not make file names infinitely long by abstracting them into a coded system?
--Ashish Ranpura.
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Curtis Wilcox (apparently)
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Mar 28, 2005 6:26 pm
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Re: How Might Smart Folders Change the Way We Work?
> Yes, it could be like looking for files with your own personal Google,
> since, as far as I know, smart folders allow you to use very
> detailed search
> criteria.
The demo I saw last week did not make the search criteria look very
detailed. It may have been a failing on the part of the demonstrator but I
asked about Boolean operators or their equivalent (AND, OR, and most
especially, NOT) and wasn't shown anything that could handle it. "And" and
"or" are probably supported one way or another ("matches all" or "matches
any") but "not" requires a more explicit option. I don't have Panther's
Finder handy but Jaguar's Find only has a "not" option for Kind and
Visibility. Smart Playlists in iTunes, on the other hand, has a "not" option
for every category.
What even Smart Playlists in iTunes lacks is parentheses or their conceptual
equivalent and I think Smart Folders are the same way. Parentheses would let
you do searches like "Kind: image, Keywords include: family AND (soccer OR
football)." This search would give you all image files with the keyword
"family" and either the "soccer" or "football." Without parentheses, you
have to do two separate searches, "family soccer" and "family football" to
find all the files you're interested in.
Parentheses are rather advanced but with the right interface they can be
used by those who know about them without adding complexity for those who
don't. "NOT" is something that I think any Smart Folders user could use,
"show me everything except..." is an easy concept.
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kirklists (apparently)
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Mar 28, 2005 6:26 pm
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Re: How Might Smart Folders Change the Way We Work?
On 3/28/05 8:34 PM, "Wilcox, Curtis" <cwilcox esm.rochester.edu> wrote:
>
> What even Smart Playlists in iTunes lacks is parentheses or their conceptual
> equivalent and I think Smart Folders are the same way. Parentheses would let
> you do searches like "Kind: image, Keywords include: family AND (soccer OR
> football)." This search would give you all image files with the keyword
> "family" and either the "soccer" or "football." Without parentheses, you
> have to do two separate searches, "family soccer" and "family football" to
> find all the files you're interested in.
Actually, the key to that kind of iTunes smart playlist is using one
playlist that calls another. For example, you have one Soccer or Football
playlist. You then have another one that calls that playlist AND the Family
playlist. It's a bit twisted, but it makes sense once you grok the logic.
Kirk
Author of: iPod & iTunes Garage
http://www.mcelhearn.com/ipod.html
- - - - - -
Read my blog: Kirkville -- http://www.mcelhearn.com
Musings, Opinion and Miscellanea, on Macs, iPods and more
Kirk McElhearn | Chemin de la Lauze | 05600 Guillestre | France
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Nik (apparently)
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Mar 28, 2005 6:26 pm
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Re: How Might Smart Folders Change the Way We Work?
On Mar 28, 2005, at 10:18 AM, Ashish Ranpura wrote:
> So my viewpoint is that while "smart" organizational systems
> substantially improve computer useability, they remain dependent on
> manually generated metadata (even if it's just the file name).
Smart Folders and Spotlight will be heavily dependent on how much
automatic metatagging is made possible by application authors. I spend
fairly little time in iTunes manually tagging my songs. A quick CDDB
lookup takes that out of my hands. (Although I do spend a bit of time
normalizing genres to make things work better.) Same goes for iPhoto
which pulls in EXIF data, some of which is quite useful (date, camera)
and other data is fairly useless (f-stop, ISO).
I can easily see existing snippet keepers creating metadata plug ins
that support their own custom tags, and a Word document or PDF already
has space for a wide variety of metadata inside the document format. I
suspect that if developers widely support Apple's metadata system,
Spotlight and Smart Folders will be incredibly useful. If they don't,
and users have to spend all their time tagging files, it won't be
useful for much other than full text searches.
However, I applaud Apple for their implementation approach which DOES
permit custom plug ins for any program. Even the most proprietary file
formats will be able to play nicely with Spotlight, provided the
developers put in the effort to build the bridge. This is a much lower
hurdle to leap than, say, OpenDoc demanded.
It also appears as though programs other than Spotlight can take
advantage of the metadata store for their own purposes. This sets the
groundwork for developers to compete on an even playing field with
Apple and provide groupings of files and searchability far exceeding
Smart Folders.
< http://developer.apple.com/macosx/tiger/spotlight.html>
--Nik
P.S. I'm not under an NDA from Apple. I just read their dev sites now
and then. Never seen Tiger outside of ThinkSecret. :)
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Lewis Butler (apparently)
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Mar 28, 2005 6:26 pm
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Re: How Might Smart Folders Change the Way We Work?
On 3/25/05 4:52 PM, "David Chilstrom" <web livingpresence.biz> wrote:
>
>> I believe that OS X 10.4 represents something of a watershed for the
>> Macintosh. While OS X has certainly altered the Mac experience,
>> with the
>> possible exception of Exposé, we haven't seen all that much in the
>> way of
>> revolutionary enhancements to the user interface. Smart Folders
>> are one of the
>> elements in Tiger that, I believe, will have a much bigger impact
>> on Mac users
>> than we might currently think.
I'm not so sure. IF a smart folder is _JUST LIKE A FOLDER_ then yes,
I agree. However, if a smart folder takes 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 4
minutes, etc, to load items, and if the items inside that folder are
not just like items in any other folder (including view options for
list and icons and such) then I don't think Smart Folders will be
very useful to most people.
For example, I have LOT of pdf files on my machine. maybe 2,000,
maybe more. If I can create a folder that searches the entire drive
for pdfs, shows them in one palce, and otherwise behaves like a
normal folder, then I will be impressed. I seriously doubt that will
be the case, however. I predict a lag of 30 seconds at LEAST, and
maybe minutes, while the search is preformed each time I try to
access that folder.
I hope I'm wrong.
> Yes, and I will predict that Spotlight is much more than the
> biggest thing
> in the Mac since the Finder; I think that if people grok the
> concept, it
> will truly change the way we interact with computers, much along
> the way you
> mention.
I have high hopes for spotlight, especially if it really can search
individual emails in a meaningful way. I plan to throw 250,000
emails at Tiger shortly after it is released and see what breaks.
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Curtis Wilcox (apparently)
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Mar 29, 2005 8:34 pm
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Re: How Might Smart Folders Change the Way We Work?
On 3/28/05 8:26 PM, "Google Kreme" <gkreme gmail.com> wrote:
> For example, I have LOT of pdf files on my machine. maybe 2,000,
> maybe more. If I can create a folder that searches the entire drive
> for pdfs, shows them in one palce, and otherwise behaves like a
> normal folder, then I will be impressed. I seriously doubt that will
> be the case, however. I predict a lag of 30 seconds at LEAST, and
> maybe minutes, while the search is preformed each time I try to
> access that folder.
It shouldn't matter what kind of files they are because the files and their
contents are indexed prior to your search. Smart Folders don't query the
filesystem, they query the Spotlight database. Speed should only be affected
by the size of the database, in megabytes and number of records (and the
performance of the computer, of course).
> I have high hopes for spotlight, especially if it really can search
> individual emails in a meaningful way. I plan to throw 250,000
> emails at Tiger shortly after it is released and see what breaks.
Count on it taking a while to do the initial indexing. It depends a lot on
what's being indexed and the performance of the Mac but based on the
estimates a couple of Apple people gave for their own Macs, 10GB/hr. could
be a ballpark number for a newish G4. Once that indexing is done, updates
are an automatic part of write operations on the filesystem. Edit a file,
save it, and the change is immediately found in a Spotlight search. This is
important for Smart Folders to become a standard way to get to files; you
don't want the contents of a Smart Folder to be out of date.
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edward (apparently)
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Mar 30, 2005 9:22 am
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Re: How Might Smart Folders Change the Way We Work?
Yup, talked about this a while back ...
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=1219
BTW, the point about speed remains: if this is implemented as an index --
more generally if the access to the file system is a relational database or
something like that -- then performance will not be an issue. You can look
something up in a millisecond that would take hours to search for. Web
search engines prove that.
Edward
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kevinv (apparently)
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Mar 30, 2005 9:22 am
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Re: How Might Smart Folders Change the Way We Work?
--On March 28, 2005 5:26:25 PM -0800 Kirk McElhearn <kirklists wanadoo.fr>
wrote:
> On 3/28/05 8:34 PM, "Wilcox, Curtis" <cwilcox esm.rochester.edu> wrote:
>
>>
>> What even Smart Playlists in iTunes lacks is parentheses or their
>> conceptual equivalent and I think Smart Folders are the same way.
>> Parentheses would let you do searches like "Kind: image, Keywords
>> include: family AND (soccer OR football)." This search would give you
>> all image files with the keyword "family" and either the "soccer" or
>> "football." Without parentheses, you have to do two separate searches,
>> "family soccer" and "family football" to find all the files you're
>> interested in.
>
> Actually, the key to that kind of iTunes smart playlist is using one
> playlist that calls another. For example, you have one Soccer or Football
> playlist. You then have another one that calls that playlist AND the
> Family playlist. It's a bit twisted, but it makes sense once you grok the
> logic.
That is truly an ugly hack unworthy of an Apple product. My list of
playlists is huge, and now I have to build more playlists that don't do
anything except are used in other playlist searches?
No, an advanced search is needed in iTunes for building complex searches,
plus hierarchical folders are needed so I can hide some of my less
frequently used lists.
Kevin
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David Chilstrom
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Apr 4, 2005 9:57 am
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Re: How Might Smart Folders Change the Way We Work?
Lewis Butler opined: "...if a smart folder takes 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 4 minutes, etc, to load items, and if the items inside that folder are not just like items in any other folder (including view options for list and icons and such) then I don't think Smart Folders will be very useful to most people." As one writer noted, at worst Spotlight will do a fast query of its index whenever a smart folder is opened. However, it will apparently be possible for a folder query to take no time at all by just leaving the smart folder open. Here's the dope from the Spotlight Tech Preview PDF: "Whenever a Spotlight client specifies that it’s invoking a “live query,” Spotlight maintains the query in the engine. Think of it as a watch list. Whenever something is updated, Spotlight checks to see if a live query is in effect and immediately notifies and updates all of the clients synchronously with new content. That way, you are assured of seeing the latest results immediately." Lewis makes an excellent point that, the less Smart Folder contents seem like query results and the more like typical items in a folder, the better. Curtis Wilcox wonders about boolean operators in Spotlight, particularly of the "not" variety. Panther's Finder is quite weak in this regard, and I don't have high hopes for Spotlight in terms of power user options. Maybe in a future version, but the focus currently seems to be on making search quick and simple. Ashish Ranpura remarks: "So my viewpoint is that while "smart" organizational systems substantially improve computer useability, they remain dependent on manually generated metadata (even if it's just the file name)." Since Spotlight searches content, you've got all the metadata you want, as long as there is descriptive text in the file. As for media files, like images and video, programs and media catalogers that handle these files could smarten up and become Spotlight aware. For instance, iPhoto lets you place images into folders (not filesystem folders, but iPhoto folders) and, with iPhoto 5, you can nest folders within folders. Organizing ones photos this way allows that organization to be represented as metadata that could be accessible outside of iPhoto. So, iPhoto's folder hierarchy Vacation->Yellowstone Trip 0604->Wildlife, could be expressed to Spotlight as searchable metadata. I won't launch into my iPhoto rant here, suffice it say, it sure would be great if iPhoto was a lot nicer to Spotlight, than it is to the Panther Finder. One concept that I didn't go into much in my original post, is how Smart folders can eliminate the need to move files from their original location. For instance, with Mail rules I make a point of moving incoming messages to specific folders. With Tiger's mail, I'm not sure whether I will just leave everything in the inbox, and let Smart Folders do the work, or not. This will take some experience to see what works best.
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jwblist (apparently)
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Apr 5, 2005 4:58 am
(#12 Total: 16)
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Re: How Might Smart Folders Change the Way We Work?
On 4/4/2005 9:57, "David Chilstrom" <web livingpresence.biz> wrote:
> One concept that I didn't go into much in my original post, is how Smart
> folders can eliminate the need to move files from their original location. For
> instance, with Mail rules I make a point of moving incoming messages to
> specific folders. With Tiger's mail, I'm not sure whether I will just leave
> everything in the inbox, and let Smart Folders do the work, or not. This will
> take some experience to see what works best.
I'm not happy unless my Inbox is empty (or at worst has no scroll bars).
However, in Apple's Mail program I don't do a lot of careful filing of the
handful of messages I do keep...Miscellaneous holds most of them.
Spotlight-aware Mail will help with that.
--John
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Curtis Wilcox (apparently)
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Apr 5, 2005 4:58 am
(#13 Total: 16)
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Re: How Might Smart Folders Change the Way We Work?
> Curtis Wilcox wonders about boolean operators in Spotlight,
> particularly of the "not" variety. Panther's Finder is quite
> weak in this regard, and I don't have high hopes for
> Spotlight in terms of power user options. Maybe in a future
> version, but the focus currently seems to be on making search
> quick and simple.
One possibility, and there is some evidence to suggest this will be
possible, is for 3rd parties to write their own software for querying the
Spotlight database. In that case, if the Finder doesn't provide "not" or
other advanced options, someone else can. Good "core" system components make
for good 3rd party opportunities.
> One concept that I didn't go into much in my original post,
> is how Smart folders can eliminate the need to move files
> from their original location. For instance, with Mail rules I
> make a point of moving incoming messages to specific folders.
> With Tiger's mail, I'm not sure whether I will just leave
> everything in the inbox, and let Smart Folders do the work,
> or not. This will take some experience to see what works best.
There will probably still be a performance hit when displaying Inbox if it
has tens of thousands of messages but maybe have the Inbox be just the
newest mail and use Smart Folders to display portions of a giant "Archive"
mail folder.
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Lewis Butler (apparently)
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Apr 5, 2005 9:29 am
(#14 Total: 16)
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Re: How Might Smart Folders Change the Way We Work?
On 4 Apr 2005, at 10:57 :46, David Chilstrom wrote:
> Lewis makes an excellent point that, the less Smart Folder contents
> seem like query results and the more like typical items in a
> folder, the better.
From everything I've been able to find on spotlight, the list of
found items in a saved search is just that, a List. You can
categorize it to some degree, but I don't see anything that leads me
to believe I can, for example, list by icon arranged by last
modification date.
I look forward to being proved wrong.
--
Rid yourself of doubt --
or should you?
-George Carlin
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David Chilstrom
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Apr 8, 2005 6:51 am
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Re: How Might Smart Folders Change the Way We Work?
On Apr 5, 2005, at 8:37 AM, Google Kreme wrote: "From everything I've been able to find on spotlight, the list of found items in a saved search is just that, a List. You can categorize it to some degree, but I don't see anything that leads me to believe I can, for example, list by icon arranged by last modification date." Page 7 of the Spotlight Tech Preview states: "The Finder displays search results on the fly in a new category-based view that organizes your files by type. Each category section is collapsible, allowing you to view the results the way you want. You can also view your results in list and icon views." Gone as an option in viewing files in Smart folders is column view, which makes sense since files in a smart folder can be from many places.
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David Chilstrom
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Apr 15, 2005 10:14 am
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Re: How Might Smart Folders Change the Way We Work?
Metadata is an important element to making Smart Folders work. The best metadata is the free kind, such as date created, modified, opened, etc. iTunes, with its ability to automatically fill in album metadata and properly name song tracks is a marvelous example of free metadata. Tiger will provide various opportunities for incorporating free metadata if there are applications which support it.
For example, photos emailed to you in Mail can be exported to iPhoto in Tiger. Rather than just dumbly submit the Photos to iPhoto, metadata could also be passed on for the photos such as the sender name, subject line of the message, date message received, etc. Safari will also be able to send images from web pages to iPhoto, so the page url and page title could be passed on as metadata to iPhoto. Of course, to handle these transactions, iPhoto's meager metadata handling would need to include support for the IPTC standard, which has fields for most of the metadata mentioned above. Since Spotlight supports IPTC, it makes sense that a future version of iPhoto should also.
This is one example of how applications can do some of the drudgery for us, by supplying metadata automatically wherever it is reasonable to do so. There is still the issue of better management of user supplied metadata, an area where there is huge room for improvement. For example, in one of the stock photos that Apple uses to promote Spotlight, here are the keywords: Animals, Color Photography, Feline, Mammal, Natural World, Nobody, Outdoors, Photography, Snow, Tiger, Wildlife. This kind of rich metadata is way beyond the capability of an application like iPhoto, and it's probably unrealistic to expect that iPhoto will evolve to handle that level of detail.
However, serious amateur and professional photographers, and photo archivists do need robust metadata management. While catalog software such as iView and Portfolio are essential for tracking media stored to CD, for media kept in one's digital shoebox on a single volume, a good metadata manager and Spotlight are all you need to find anything fast. Indeed, while image cataloging apps do endeavor to manage the metadata for media, they do a surprisingly poor job of it in terms of reducing the tedium of data entry. There is huge room for improvement. Graphic Converter does some nice tricks with IPTC data, one being that you can drag an entire group of keywords onto a batch of photos and assign them en masse. Not perfect, but it's moving in the right direction.
While current tools and approaches make metadata management somewhat difficult, Spotlight and Smart Folders give developers an inspiring platform on which to develop powerful metadata support. Just as "plastics" was the buzzword in the Graduate, "metadata" is one of the hot buzzwords behind the power of Spotlight.
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TidBITS TidBITS TidBITS Talk How Might Smart Folders Change the Way We Work?
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