I can see what you're saying in an environment where multiple people are handling the same files. But for me it's not about organizing files at all, I already have a system for that and since I work in a closed environment what I don't need is yet another "tagging" system for my files. I know where the stuff I want is, and besides that I've got spotlight if I can't find something. Another layer of organization is pointless for me, I just need color labels so I can identify things quickly.
Yeah, I get that. I mean, it's surprising to me that Apple would take away label functionality after there was such an uproar during the 10.0 period and they added them back after much user protest. I think they didn't understand (or care) that some people use labels more as highlighting tools.
Besides I've never fully understood the point of tags. So now instead of remembering where I put my files I have to remember how I tagged them? How is that any better? To me it's exactly the same thing as a folder hierarchy, except that now "folders" are just called "tags" and instead of "searching a folder" you "search for a tag". How is that any better, or for that matter even any different? It's just a different word for the same thing.
"But you can apply multiple tags" people say. So what? I can create multiple folders too. In my "Pictures" folder I have subfolders for various events. So what, instead of a folder I have a "Pictures" tag with various "tags" for different events? Again it looks to me like "Tags" is just a hipster way of saying "Folders", which I already have.
Okay, I'll give you a couple examples.
1) Steve is a freelance graphic designer. He has a clients directory, and under that he has a folder for each client, and under each one of those he has individual project directories. He often has a couple freelance projects going at the same time, in addition to his personal projects. He used to color each project with "In Progress" and "Client Review" labels. He'd also color the latest version of a graphic comp Photoshop and Illustrator files with another "Latest" label.
In Mavericks, Steve has tagged project folders "In Progress" and current comps "Latest". Now these show up in a Finder window's sidebar, and Steve can immediately access what he needs to work on without having to wade through folder hierarchies every time.
2) Julie is a Creative Director at an advertising firm. While working on a project pitch for a client, she often has hundreds of files to manage per project -- photos, movies, mockups from her Art Directors, potential music for commercials, budgets from the Account teams, etc. Finding that image of a robot riding a horse she grabbed from a stock photo site quickly can be a frustrating experience, especially when the file is named something like 1193732238-a.jpg. But an AD had given her over 100 robot photos to look it and she'd dumped it in the same folder, ugh. Fortunately, when Julie downloaded the image she took the time to tag it with the tags "robot" and "horse". So Julie does Command-F, searches for those tags and boom, there it is.
Now Julie needs to find a photo of an ocean for a magazine she's working on. She does a tag search for "ocean". That didn't help much, she has thousands of ocean photos on her drive. But this one in particular had a surfer in it, and a sailboat. Maybe she tagged it? So she does a tag search for "ocean", "surfer", "sailboat", and yes, found it!
Do you start to see the benefits of tags now? It's about reducing the reliance on rigid folder structures and long, overly-descriptive filenames, so that one can search for multiple property descriptors to quickly narrow focus onto relevant files, no matter where they are. Yes, you still have to remember what tags you used, the computer will never replace one's memory, but you can quickly see the available tags.
By the way, here's a good
Macworld article on tagging tips.
Which brings us to the one thing that tags and folders do NOT have in common: Visual cues. If I "tag" a folde with a color label, now that folder is different than the rest, and easily spotted.
I suggested earlier in the thread that files with only one tag should look like the old labels. Putting more than one tag on a file would change the file to the dots motif, or hopefully something better (maybe vertical color stripes). If you like that idea, perhaps send feedback to Apple about it.
Mavericks stinks because for the first time stuff has been screwed up, but as far as I can see nothing has been improved. It's a step backwards, plain and simple.
I suppose that kind of thing is subjective. I felt the way you do about Lion and ML. They added nothing important, gave us useless stuff I never asked for or wanted like social media BS plastered into my OS, and reduced functionality and added gaudy visual elements. So by comparison, Mavericks seems like a breath of fresh air to me. However, I'm still waiting until at least 10.9.1 to upgrade for Apple to get the kinks out.
