Saw this linked to from a site discussing good usability on Open Source projects (with a tip of the hat to the Firefox browser). Though it's a year old (3/2003), it's a good read. It underscores some of thing things I still haven't been able to get used to with OS X (though I now live in X all the time). From the first MacOS through MacOS 9, the Mac was spatial through and through.
One interacts with such an interface by recognizing objects based on their size, shape, position, color, and other visual traits, and then using motor skills to manipulate those objects.
With OS X lots of old spatial cues disappear.
Although it may offend Mr. Jobs's aesthetic sensibilities, the simple fact is that humans are much more adept at dealing with visual/spatial clutter than mental clutter. By compromising the user's ability to manage files and folders based on familiar spatial cues and behaviors, all the complexity of the file system hierarchy is simply moved from the screen into the user's mind.
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