“Rediscovering” the operating system (AKA: the desktop is the killer app)
I feel as though I have lost touch with the idea of the OS as software.
I’ve spent a lot of time looking for that all in one solution. Notes, reminders, calendar, etc. in one convenient app. Notion first, then AI came and fucked it all up. Obsidian was cool, super customisable, but I found that I don’t really need what it offers, stuff like linking and graph view aren’t that useful to me. The idea of a ‘second brain’ has always been interesting to me, but I could never find anything that made sense.
Recently, the thought hit me… “isn’t an OS just an super all-in-one app?”. This sounds stupid, but I haven’t actually considered the power of—in my case—macOS itself. I’ve just been using it as a portal for all these other bits of complex software, when surely it’s all built in?
Obviously finder would be the core of the system, but does anyone have experience with just… using the desktop metaphor as intended? Folders with files in them, that get opened in a program, and when you’re done, get saved back into the folder. Put things you use regularly on the desktop (or shortcuts to them, to maintain organisation) and delete them from the desktop when you don’t need them anymore. Again, it sounds stupid typing it out, surely the answer is “yeah dummy, that’s how you use a computer!!!!!” but… why do I have obsidian, and the photos app, and all this extra junk?
Going back to obsidian, for example. Surely, textedit (which has relatively simple rich-text editing, as well as plaintext) and some well thought out folders can get me where I need to go. It’s also widely compatible, since I can just… copy a file, should I choose to switch to Linux completely at some point.
I suspect this disconnect is a result of the iphoneification of personal computers, there’s a lot of layers between you and the file when you’re on a mobile device.
So, am I just talking nonsense? Or is it time, after these years of searching, for me to finally start using the computer as a computer again?
This is actually why I like Obsidian. You point the repo to an iCloud folder and it just piggybacks of the sync to have it work on every Obsidian device on something that uses iCloud. It even works on Windows machines if you use the iCloud on Windows application, which is handy since my gaming rig is what I’d use to run a local LLM model and it’ll be good to save directly to the same folder that Obsidian reads off. More things need to just use the scaffolding of the file system to manage your files.
This was also what initially attracted me to the Old iTunes. When you imported your music to it the file got saved in a big Music library folder that it hierarchically sorts into folders based on artist and album. It could also do a bunch of “database” type operations on those files, but the thing it’s using at bottom is just your files arranged in folders as Jobs intended. And if you changed an album tag on a file it would just make a new folder and put the song on that album folder. It was great, but now even MacOS tries to abstract the file system away so people don’t know what it is. I don’t understand why people decided file managers were bad or “too complicated” all of a sudden.
Yeah I think developers who came up post-iPhone just have a different model for what a computer is and how it works. Everything is networked all the time so they’ve always had the experience of the computer having practical uses. Those of us who came up with Apple IIs or DOS machines got used to understanding directories and mostly just remember the entire point of the computer was to work on files, sometimes hot-swapping floppy disks to have multiple applications to operate on a single file. Even once we got MacOS and Windows what did we do at first? Poked around the interface, opened up files just to see what they did, edited weird .ini files to modify attributes in a game, drew dumb shit in MS Paint. This is what a computer is FOR. Make you own fun, it doesn’t need to involve Docker or installing a bunch of libraries that you have only a foggy notion of what they do.
Apple is half the reason for this learned helplessness towards computers, being opinionated to the point of paternalistic.
Microsoft is the other half, because they worked really hard to insure that 'use Office' was the single skill the majority of people would learn. And the OS let you footshotgun so easily that it did (does) require specialized IT knowledge to prevent hosing the whole schebang up pretty easily.
Windows 95 had 0 qualms with 9 yr old Vord organizing all the files in C:\Windows into seperate folders per extension.
You got all the way to the end of a long paragraph of me citing some of the cool and convenient things Apple has done to make the most of Mac file system to say “Apple is the reason for learned helplessness.” Crazy work.
Can they not both be true?
On the one hand, yes, Apple has done a lot of cool and convenient things to make the most of the Mac filesystem, as you've said.
On the other hand, iOS is a very large proponent of pretending the filesystem doesn't exist. For instance, it is to the best of my understanding strictly impossible to view "My Photos" through the Files app; Photos is the only way to see them. Modern MacOS, for its part, makes it difficult to see anything outside of your personal "Home" directory. If I want to see the root filesystem I can't easily do that in Finder: I have to go to the terminal and run
open /if I want to do that. Also, as I poke around the photos thing seems to be true in MacOS as well, actually; the "Photos" directory in my home folder contains nothing but a single opaque file calledPhotos Library.photoslibrarythat has all of my photos in it and must be opened using the Photos app.Windows, for all its faults (which are numerous and ever-increasing, don't get me wrong; I will take MacOS any day at this point), will pretty much let you look through C: drive to your heart's content.
I believe this has to do with the way permissions are managed on mobile devices, not just for iOS, but for Android as well. I'm going to analog Android as that's what I know, but the principle is:
Each app is only allowed to store data in its own "App folder" on the host filesystem. With Android, if I want to use a generic file explorer app to view the data of other apps/in other places on the filesystem, I have to explicitly grant it permission (through the OS) to do so. The ideology is combating apps from being able to look at things they have no business looking at. For example, by implementing this, the Facebook app is not allowed by default to view all the photos/videos (and other files) on one's device. Similarly, if I wanted to upload a photo to the Facebook app that I took, Android is going to ask if I want to allow Facebook to view all my photos, or just specific one(s).
The drop-off of my knowledge is how iOS does (or doesn't?) allow specific apps OS level permission to look in folders other than "their own" on the host filesystem. But in any case, the enhanced privacy offered by this methodology outweighs the drawbacks, in my opinion.
Old android was much more desktop-like in its filesystem use. This is one major reason a lot of old android apps don't work on newer versions.
It was much easier to automate and share stuff between apps.
Yup! Hence why there's still a demand for the original Google Pixel, for people wanting to use SyncThing and take advantage of the promotion of "Free photo storage for life" for photos and videos uploaded from that device.
I'm fairly familiar with the way iOS permissions are set up. As you alluded to in your last paragraph, though, iOS does allow apps special permissions to look into other apps' folders. Files can very easily look into the folders of other apps on my device (Firefox, Obsidian, Mobius (which can itself look into other apps' folders), etc). The mechanism exists, and the fact that Photos data isn't a valid target for it is a conscious decision on Apple's part.
It's something of a moot point, though, as I can only assume that photos on iOS are stored in an SQLite
Photos Library.photoslibraryfile like they are on MacOS and so them existing in the visible filesystem at all wouldn't get you much in terms of ability to manage them. It would help for backing them up, but that's mostly it.You can save image files to Files.app where they can be acted on by whatever, that’s just not where they end up by default. You can use the share sheet on a photo in Photos.app to save it to whatever folder in Files.app. And you could write a Siri Shortcut to bulk save them. And I think it doesn’t even occupy storage by saving a duplicate file because of how APFS works (though I’m not sure about that part).
But yeah it takes a bit of work if you want to do that. What I end up doing is having all my photos across all devices backup to my Synology where the folder tree mirrors the albums in Photos.app on my Mac.
That’s more of an app design choice. Photos stores its images in a SQLite database (you can actually quite easily read its contents through any SQLite client). Apple decided that the data for photos had a more relational structure rather than folder based.
Absolutely. I completely acknowledge that. But design choices are what we're talking about here: design choices that make use of the filesystem, and design choices that don't. Old iTunes could also have easily said that the data for songs had a more relational structure (they can be sorted by genre, decade, artist, and they can have multiple artists, etc) and was better suited to live in an SQLite database, but they didn't. That was a design choice they made that allowed users manage and view them through the filesystem, and now in the present day they're making different design choices.
While this is true, nobody is going to use an SQLite client as their primary interface for managing their photos. That's an "I no longer have access to anything but this file and need to crack it open for data recovery" option, not a daily-driver option.
The Photos and Music apps are a little weird because those actually are just sitting on top of the iPhone OS’s database. In a way that is the filesystem, it’s just that the Photos app is not as good at managing it as Finder is at managing things generically. The SDKs for managing those files uses those libraries. I’m not sure what the Music app is doing, but I know for Photos the reason for the complexity is because the individual photo is basically not just the photo file. It’s an object that has the entire edit history of that file along with a bunch of metadata that includes not just the EXIF data but also stuff for all those ML enhancements, like face detection/identification. This is partly why when you get a new phone it seems to really cook for the first week or so because it’s doing all this on-device ML to the photos to profile them.
I think it would be possible to organize it kind of like iTunes used to do music but things would get complicated fast, not least of which because there isn’t a general convention for how photos should be organized the way there was with Music. And even with Music it’s not that settled, because Apple felt the need to create a separate music app specifically for Classical music, which uses the same database as Music, because the data model for pop music doesn’t work very well for Classical. (And even that’s only Western classical because neither model works that well for, say, Hindustani music or even Western genres like jam bands.)
I mean, you said it yourself in the sentence before:
The problem wasn't the innovations Apple made. The problem was the transitions away from it. If we divide (and broadly simplify) the timeline, Microsoft birthed the learned helplessness in the PC era and Apple raised it in the Iphone era.
I'd point to streaming services as one inflection point. All of a sudden file management became irrelevant for consumption at the same time the devices became geared more toward consumption.
Somewhat tangential, my spouse identified the iPod video as the inflection point where mobile electronics transitioned from tools to consumption devices. Before, none of them required or encouraged staring at the device for long durations. You would snap a quick picture, talk/text, take a note, or listen to music; but it was all in service of the area around instead of the device itself. But with a TV show on your ipod, you ignore the world around you for 20-30 min.
And as mobile devices(and web browsers) came to dominate people's lives, the abstractions they made from the filesystem ported back to the main desktop.
Architectural decisions made for a phone don’t mean much when we’re talking about how PCs work doesn’t make sense. These are different devices used for different reasons. I will never understand why a certain clade of tech people keep conflating the two. It was almost like 10-15 years of having iPhones before they ever even got to the point where you could have a conversation about using one for most PC related activities, and the experiment on what level of access to the machine developers should have if you want a software development ecosystem that’s conducive to indie app developers actually making money the verdict has come down pretty decisively on the since of the App Store model.
Abstracting the file management system on the desktop OSes didn’t start in MacOS, it started from the transition of enterprise software going from stuff that runs on your computer to stuff that treats your computer a thin client for some SaaS thing. Aside from managing photos the average user basically does not interact with their stuff on files because it’s all cloud based shit now. If anyone’s responsible for that transition it’s Google rather than Apple or Microsoft.
Nobody was watching videos on an iPod video unless they were on a plane or something. It was Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram that shifted usage patterns to scrolling through the phone all day.
Not exactly the same, but on a related note, I get very confused when someone is talking about China and inevitably brings up WeChat and how "every single service is in one app". Like, yeah, we have that too. It's called a web browser. A web browser is a super app as well, people just don't tend to recognize it as one.
I can give you some insight there. WeChat automates logging into each service because your phone number and bank card are already registered on the app, and it also means the mini-apps have some of the conveniences of a full screen app (compared to browser navigation) without having to download, install, and set them up each time.
Which isn't really any different from "log in with Google", except login with Google is optional and login with WeChat is not
All mobile web browsers can do PWAs
Unless a given service only supports logging in with Google. I've encountered more than a few.
And the iPhone didn't support PWAs worth a damn till 2018. And not notifications till ~2024.
I can't speak to the experience of logging in with Google at restaurants, tourist attractions, or public transit, because my country doesn't generally have that level of integration so I'm still on debit cards and cash. What I can do is describe the workflow of using WeChat to explain what it's so ubiquitous.
Here's a less than one minute demonstration of someone using it to order: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5e7B_NVfYI
It’s not as seamless but this integration exists in the US. Toast is a notable provider. If you go to Okiburo in NYC, for instance, you sit down, scan a QR code, a webpage opens up with your seat number, you order with the ability to customize the food, you pay with Apple/Google Pay (or manual credit card entry).
Pretty much the same thing.
The problem is that it’s a different stack at every restaurant, and sometimes the restaurants will list multiple options to do things, which might each have different upcharges on the menu items. And absolutely NONE OF IT is actually performant in anyway. Once again, the technology of having a functional way to display images and text via the internet is simply a discipline lost to time.
WeChat’s ubiquity is the feature because it means the interaction pattern for doing anything is uniform wherever you go. The buttons and prompts are in the same place each time. You never have to login to a new service or install yet another fucking app that will prompt you to enable notifications and share location data. It “just works.”
I mean that’s also true for WeChat. Every restaurant mini-app is slightly different, and they’re absolutely allowed to have different upcharges on menu items (why wouldn’t they? Truffles is more expensive than extra egg on the side).
The payments is the most friction-ful part. If you have Apple Pay set up, it’s fine, if you don’t, it’s a pain to enter card details.
Actually, the real worse part is that in the US our cell signal sucks and a lot of buildings are old and basically faraday cages. But that’s not really a software problem.
No I mean the price of every menu item will be different if you order through DoorDash vs. Toast vs. Postmates vs. whatever. Because they all put hidden service fees that are disguised as just the price of the item that the restaurants don’t have any control over. The business’ own mini-app can be different but even those have a standard set of things they’re supposed to do so they don’t, for instance, force you to go through a crappy website that wants to download 500MB worth of tracking cookies to show you a menu.
That’s not how it works for what I’m talking about. Obviously the restaurant knows what the price is going to be when they’re the ones that have to print the QR codes and put them on the tables lol.
This isn’t a take out situation, where the restaurant may not be in the loop at all, the restaurant obviously has sign a contract with Toast as their PoS provider where they agree on Toast’s margin.
Toast is a PoS company. It’s completely different from DoorDash.
The mini app can do that if it wants to. They can run arbitrary code. If anything it is more powerful than a website, which is more heavily sandboxed.
AppClips on iOS is supposed to sort of do this too, but it’s incorporated into the OS. The problem is nobody uses it and I think many people don’t even know it exists.
Funnily enough Apple's own documentation for App Clips gives the example of being used by a restaurant to let you order food quickly with a native-ish experience. Android also had something similar called Android Instant but Google finally killed it off at the end of last year (as you'd expect) in part due to low usage so I can't imagine App Clips get much use either.
If only Elon had another half a trillion dollars of someone else’s money, I’m sure he could rebuild a worse version of the entire Internet nested within one website... 🤮
This sounds more like rediscovering filesystems. I think naming and arranging files in folders is something a lot of people have gotten away from and don't want to go back to. An app could do that for you, though, like iTunes does.
The files are still there, unless it's a Sqlite database or something like that.
Yep that's pretty much what I do. Except with tabs in my file explorer instead of desktop shortcuts usually. I don't get into tiling windows or using extra desktops, seems like extra steps. Just one big clutter on one desktop where I know where everything is and what I'm using is quickly in reach.
Nah, not so silly, folks want apps for everything and to abstract away using the computer itself.
I don't know, it always seemed like more work to me, especially if I can't freely access that data as a common format. But I'm also not about trying to organize my life into a digital format, I do that analogue. Including learning, I do handwritten notes, don't want the friction of a computer or app between me and putting information down, writing it out makes it stick better for me any way.
I agree, I've bemoaned this abstraction and how it mollifies users into not truly understanding how to use their devices and accepting somebody else's -- often paid -- solutions. Though that's fine for many folks who want the convenience computers can provide without needing to use a computer, like my grandparents, so it's a bit of "aging person yelling at the clouds." And some do earnestly simplify the process while not interfering with the filesystem way of working, like my server stack.
I feel this and it's how I use things for the most part. A lot of text is in text files and sublime text as my editor. Photos and music and all that type of thing are just files in folders that I access directly and then toss into a program of choice when necessary. I don't really use "organizational" tools as much at all anymore.
Notes are maybe a slight exception to the rule- in that I use Joplin (and WebDAV for syncing it)- but I chose it specifically because it uses folders instead of tags (which I really do not like in my notes apps- I don't like the "all" views, etc - it breaks the organization paradigm I like in a way that my brain actively hates), so it mimics how it would work on a desktop. Having it all in one app on mobile and easily accessible is useful though, so its why I do it that way.
However, it's really only for notes that I want to have in multiple places and synced. I still use text files all the time for device-local notes.
I strongly overall prefer the simplicity approach. Files in folders, especially files that are easily readable and accessible on any device without extra software. Plain text where possible. Not proprietary formats and such. I don't hate the idea of markdown and markdown notes systems because at the end of the day its plaintext underneath, but sometimes it feels like an unnecessarily layer of complexity on top and so on
Same for me, pretty much – "files in folders" is a great way to put the mantra.
The only thing I do miss sometimes is the Photos (in my case iOS, but I'm assuming most have this) app's "map" feature, where you can search over the entire library by location, interactively. Sometimes the date (which I usually sort my folders by) is not as relevant, for example if you want to show a "best of" a given location, or the changes it has seen over the years, or even when you know where a photo was taken, but not quite when.
This is probably something that can be replicated with a standalone program and some metadata/index over the entirety of a directory like
Pictures/, but I haven't bothered checking if such a tool exists yet.Ah yeah, interesting, I can see how that would be useful for some. I personally disable location info on all photos (and often clean all EXIF data) as a security/privacy step since so many people online share photos without realizing they are sharing location information embedded in them.
I could see manually tagging photos being useful for searching and organizing but I just don't interact with my own photos that way. The enclosing folder usually is a clear enough label for me to recall what the photos are about or where they are from. Usually date, date/place, or date/purpose.
I feel like I have definitely seen desktop programs with these metadata/tagging features though so there may be something out there that matches what you want
I had a very similar realisation recently too. I find the desktop metaphor more comfortable, and enjoyable. It has less cognitive load and reminds me of old times a bit too. I can share what I've managed to "de-app" so far.
I've started saving browser bookmarks to a folder by dragging the URL to Finder. This doesn't work when there are multiple tabs so the first step is to drag/pop the tab out into a window of its own. Then drag the URL to Finder.
Another thing is Calibre. I've actually started just adding epub files to a folder of books. The file manager shows the covers as thumbnails anyway and I use the option to hide file extensions to make it more legible. I do use Calibre to transfer wirelessly sometimes, or to convert, but that's it.
I've started keeping my music albums as files and folders too, using Quicklook to play them. This only works while I don't need to use the file manager of course, but it's enough for me. I don't need a music app all the time. It does mean manually progressing each song but that suits me since I'm happy with silent periods between songs.
Just a few days ago I started using TextEdit instead of Notes. I find having a few tabs open in TextEdit is more relatable because it's similar to browser tabs. I can keep switching back and forth between tabs as needed to update a note or retrieve something. I do have Sublime Text for occasional coding.
Like
yourselfanother commenter, my photos now go in folders. In the new year, I created a sub-folder called 2025 and put everything into it.Another thing I've started using is an additional file manager. Forklift, in my case. Having an additional one with more advanced layouts helps in some cases and means I can leave Quicklook playing music from Finder while still interacting with other files in Forklift.
I still use Launchpad for applications, though. I have 130+ applications in subfolders, leaving three screens of commonly used applications. I can't imagine being able to achieve that kind of custom organisation and decluttering with Finder (or with macOS 26, which I'm not going to upgrade to).
Does TextEdit allow you to create relations between notes? Like how you can backlink to other notes in obsidian if you want to reference a topic you already expanded on in another file?
No, I don't believe it has any features remotely like that. Rich Text is as fancy as it gets, although I prefer the plain text option.
(I'm going to make sweeping generalizations to the best of my viewpoint of the world but without any evidence backing anything. As such, my generalizations may be significantly in error...)
Early computer use was something that was taught in school. The computers of the time were able to function but they were general purpose computing devices. To do a task with them, you had to learn to do that task with them. This was quite a bit of freedom, to use that computer "tool" for anything that could be done with with that tool, and people had to be taught how to use that tool.
There is something to be said about a specific tool too. If one wanted to write a document, a typewriter can only do that. It is easier to teach on (since it can only do that one thing), it is easier "to manage" (since users can only do that one task with that device), and seems like the ideal use case for document creation. Still, the device had notable drawbacks that made using computers a better idea (such as difficulty erasing things, difficulty formatting, lack of spell check, etc.)
It seems like the idea, in general, was not to teach the freedom of using a general purpose computer. The idea was to accomplish a task by teaching the use of a specific tool that only does that task. While some devices existed to try to push the specific tool narrative (like the Alphasmart typing device), it would take a while for something to really hit the proper notes for school use.
We now have Chromebooks. I can't fault what they are (they being "a browser" and "maybe something else") since they are cheap devices that have great battery life. The problem is that they are devices where the file system is generally avoided (and its' use discouraged) and using on device "apps" is also discouraged (since the browser can take you wherever you want to go). They are locked down to make sure that they do the specific tasks that classrooms desire. That being said, they are more akin to typewriters in that sense.
You use a website to enter your work. It "automatically saves" your work "to the internet" and allows you to submit from there. If you drop-kick your Chromebook then you are given another to log in. After all, "nothing is on the Chromebook" so you don't need to worry about that. The concepts of files and folders is abstracted away to being what is stored in your Google Drive if you even interact with it in a meaningful basis... and I don't know if students really do that too much.
(Sidenote: Chromebooks (with the Files app) does let you manage files and folders, let you store things on the device only, and let you manage removable storage as well. That being said, I'm not sure any students are taught about that or even interact with that.)
Students see Chromebooks as computers. Students don't see Chromebooks as a device giving them the freedom to organize data and run any general applications though. So while Windows and Macintosh and Linux will let you explore those options, those options are not on devices that most younger folks interact with. Since those options are not on Chromebooks, students are not taught about them (since a 'specific tool' to do specific things was the goal, schools want to teach how to use that tool in a specific manner).
I agree that the term 'iphoneification' can help describe what has happened over time (since it conveys the point rather well). Still, I think Chromebooks and their use as specific tools rather than general computing has done more harm to that end. A computer (seen equivalent as a Chromebook) is seen as a thing that does specific things and assumed to do nothing more. As such, file systems of files and folders is not generally necessary to teach and likely is just ignored these days.
Chromebooks have another interesting point to them. They have a wallpaper on their "desktop" but you cannot store any files or folders on the desktop. General experience on phones and Chromebooks conveys the point that icons are programs that can be run and nothing else... certainly not something like files or folders. It makes some sense... after all, phones are supposed to do phone things and small program tasks and Chromebooks are supposed to do browser things. They really don't want to emphasize that the device can store and organize data...
To attempt to come to a point with my meanderings, I don't think schools are really focusing on teaching "general computing" to their students. They have a ton of material to teach their students so they can't teach everything. It is easier to manage technology use when you don't emphasize that "computers can do everything" and instead emphasize that "computers only do your homework". Still, it does limit how much people would expect computers to be able to do for them when all the power and complexity is hidden behind "a curtain". It isn't all that surprising that I'm seeing more and more people using phones only these days and not bothering with computers... after all, they "know computers" as doing little more than a phone.
I really think a lot of the push for Chromebooks was for the convenience of school IT managers and worries about children using school property to access inappropriate material (adult content, gambling), install keyloggers or webcam hijacking malware.
To that end I really feel like we’d have been better off teaching online/digital safety as part of our computer use training instead of trying to manage around it. We should have accepted some risk and accept that some kids are gonna end up looking at boobs or sext each other and addressed that kind of conduct after someone violated a policy, including threat of criminal liability if they do things like sharing or distributing the adult material.
The two things I feel like I’m missing from an OS that makes me search for “all-in-one” apps like Notion:
But otherwise, yeah I’ve been wrestling with the same thoughts. Why give all my notes, calendar, tables, folders, tags, and AI context to a SaaS platform that’s going to keep raising prices? I had wrapped back all the way around to a self-hosted product like Anytype, but yeah why not use the OS it’s hosted on instead?
Your comment got me thinking and I wonder if the Freeform app might be able to work a bit here? It's a very different format than a Notion or Word Doc but:
The big caveat is that you NEED Apple devices to use it though so it'll be a non-starter for many.
I don’t think I follow.
As others have mentioned, Web browser is closer to an everything app(Hence WPA and Electron). But if I understood wanting to see everything as “Files in a folder”. I’d suggest using the “Documents”, “Downloads”, “Music”, and such as their intended use.
IMO downloads should only have files temporarily, after you’re done you either delete them or move them somewhere. But I among many don’t do it that way and end up with a downloads folder too large or too lazy to clean.
Documents should contain things you work on like your PDFs and Words and such, organized as needed.
Pictures is self explanatory though MacOS conflicts with that workflow because of it having a Photos app and library.
Music is for any MP3s or WAVs or FLACs and whatnot.
That doesn’t mean you can’t make a new folder for a specific category too, like a specific Projects folder, ROMs folder, etc.
The point I got is that how we think about computers and how we use them has changed. These days the paradigm is more about accessing files and data through dedicated applications - open Word, then open your document from there; open Excel, then open your spreadsheet from there; open Obsidian, then open your notes from there. You are thinking of the computer in terms of the applications it runs, not the capabilities of the OS itself. It's even more stark when you bring online applications that automatically upload/sync for you and you never have to think of the actual files.
This is contrasted with using the built-in file browser and other core features to access files and manage them. As someone else said, it's a rediscovery of the file system and heirarchy. It's using file folders and the desktop to emulate how you would work with physical files, the analogy that those were originally designed around.
People have joked about emacs being the real general-purpose OS (or now, the browser being the OS). It feels like OP has decided to try letting their OS be their Operating System.
You say this, but a lot of developers seem to think the Document folder is where you put things like config files that are supposed to go in the app libraries folder or within the app container itself. And if you move it to the appropriate place their application will either not work or it will recreate a new folder in Documents to dump its config files in.
...there's a lot to like in OS/X but the macintosh lost its killer application when apple abandoned the spatial finder and discoverable usability as their core mission...
I grew up on macOS starting with System 7, and on Windows 3.11 and later Windows desktops, So, yeah, I organize the bejeezus out of my files and folders. I live out of three directories:
But I really only use the Finder a few times a day. I mostly live in my terminal, my browser, and a few other apps that get booted as-needed. Organization is something that the terminal encourages, because when you list the files in the current directory, it's best if the buffer isn't so big you have to scroll back or pipe it through a command that lets you paginate the output.
Finder itself does have some power, but if Apple nixed it tomorrow and left me with the macOS equivalent of the iPhone/iPad Files app, and still let me use Terminal (or iTerm2 in my case), I'd be alright. I wouldn't be happy, but I'd be alright. If they nixed terminal, I'd simply sell my Mac and I'd be fully back on Linux without skipping a beat.
The thing is, I don't accept the "iPhoneification" of even my iPhone. I know exactly where all of my apps store their stuff in iCloud, and how to get to it without my iPhone or iPad. Except for Photos. I still have to use the Photos apps to get to those. But I make sure only actual camera photos live there as much as possible, and anything else goes to a real folder in iCloud.