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jvreeland | 6 months ago

I think I broadly agree with this. I am super frustrated that everythign always wants me to search for things. As an example Finders default search while looking at a folder is the whole machine instead of a filter in the directory you are viewing in seems totally insane to me. It's almost like they don't want me to know where my files are.

I can understand that it's a result, to a degree of cloud services and peoples primary mode swapping to opening and app and opening recents or searching instead of opening a file to open an app but it does mean that you're at the mercy of what I experience as some pretty crap search algorithms that don't seem to want you to find the information you're looking for. I keep encountering searches that rank fuzzy matches over exact matches or aren't stable as you continue to complete the same word and I just don't understand how that's acceptable after being pointed out if search is what I'm supposed to be using.

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autoexec|6 months ago

> It's almost like they don't want me to know where my files are.

I think this might actually be true in some cases. Especially where companies want your files on their cloud servers. It's better for them if you don't think about what's stored locally or remotely. It's better for them if you don't think at all and just ask them for whatever you want and let them decide what to show you or keep hidden from you. It's easier for them to get metrics on what you're doing if you type it out explicitly in a search box than it is for them to track you as you browse through a hierarchy you designed to get to what you want. You're supposed to feel increasingly helpless and dependent on them.