File Problems On The Mac: It’s A Mess In There.

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That brings me to another point regarding the File Mess on Mac OS X. How about the files generated by applications? They’re all over the place, too.

For example, some applications store their files in logical places, many do not. iTunes and iPhoto files are stored where you’d expect; in the application or in the Home directory/folder. Mostly.

In the System/Library/Application Support directory, there’s all my GarageBand loops. And directories from Adobe, Apple, Macromedia, Mozilla, and a couple dozen other utilities on my Mac.

In the Home/Library/Application Support directory, there’s even more directories from every utility you can think of. What a mess. Some here, some there. Some are, well, somewhere else and God only knows where that is.

Yes, I know it’s important to segregate applications for all users vs. those for a single user (mine is a single user machine—my significant other isn’t allowed to touch), still finding files, tracking down problems, can be a headache. There’s Fonts for everyone, and Fonts for just me.

There’s mail for me and for each other user, but not for everyone. And don’t get me started on Preferences. Aren’t there any rules on how those should be laid out in the Preferences directory?

The com.apple.whatever.plist I can understand. What about cf#f4Bwl? What’s that mean? Some prefs files have icons, some don’t. Some are cryptic, others have a full, easily identifiable file name.

Obviously, there’s more to the System and Library directories than most Mac users want to know, need to know, should know. But it’s not a hands off area. Sometimes you have to go in there and do stuff. And some of those files just shouldn’t be moved around.

The gripes could go on, but I don’t think we’re going to feel as good about an instant Search function (due next year) as we’d like. It’s bound to turn up a lot more junk on our Macs than we should even look at, let alone check to see what it is.

I want that utility to help me organize my files, then give me a search utility that brings them up without looking (too hard). As to the rest of the Mac’s file organization mess, it seems to me that “loops” for GarageBand should go in Music (or, at worst, a directory appropriately named GarageBand Music).

Finally, I have a problem with iMovie movies. They’re not searchable.

To see the clips in any iMovie project you have to open the project, hope you left the movies on the Shelf, or at worst, click on each media clip in the Media directory of the project.

There needs to be other iPhoto, iTunes-like applications (besides the ultra expensive iViewMedia Pro—have you seen the price tag on that these days?) that help document and store non-music, non-photo files.

What do you think? What’s your take on the file mess? What do you use to keep track of files, documents, junk?

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