Overall agree with the article: use individual apps that do well what they're designed to do, and use the file system to organize your stuff. Unfortunately, a tremendous number of users cannot make heads or tales out of the file system.
I believe the chief causes of the confusion are (1) different apps save newly created/edited files to different places (2) many users are clueless about navigating the file system within the Save As dialog (3) many users rely on an app's Recent list (4) many users don't know how to search their own file systems.
(1) Some apps always want to Save As to the Documents folder. Some always want to Save As to wherever you finished off your previous Save As. Some always want to Save As to the folder of the file you most recently opened in that app. Etc. No one can remember each app's convention.
(2) People don't realize they can navigate within Save As to someplace other than wherever the app feels like plopping the file by default at that moment. True even when shown over and over and over how to do this.
(3) Once you move a file, its entry in an app's Recent listing is probably borked. This sends people who rely on Recent for finding and opening files into a panic.
(4) They don't know how to click on the desktop and hit cmd-F or to click on Start->Find. And once they do, the Find window looks nothing like Google or a web browser. They don't understand what the various search criteria are or how to enter them. They don't know how to read the results.
The file system is a lie. It's all a blob of memory and your data is like trash, thrown about all over the place. How it appears in your little Windows Explorer has little to do with how it's stored, so why can't we have more flexible systems for structuring our data?
As soon as you toss out the idea of separate folders, then your points become moot and are solved (except for maybe point 4, though I think a new OS would want to heavily promote that).
(5) Different apps want to open files in different places. One app's Open dialog wants to look in the directory you finished off your last Open. Another app wants Open to look in the directory of the file you most recently opened by double clicking on its icon. A third app wants Open to look in the directory where you completed your most recent Save. Etc. As in the Save As problem, no one can remember each app's Open convention.
I know several older people (in their 70s) who sorely miss the days of yore when they worked with their user files on floppies. Each project lived on one or two floppies. Even if the OS allowed subdirectories, they didn't bother creating them. So, on DOS or early Windows, say, the users could always find their work at A:\ (unless there was no hard drive; then their work was at B:\). No getting lost in Open or Save As, no Recent nonsense, no digging down through folder icons, and hardly a need for built-in search.
We've been living with hierarchical file systems for several years now. And the upshot is, the Finder (or whatever it's called) and desktop apps plus newfangled browser apps don't present a consistent interface to the file system.
I believe the chief causes of the confusion are (1) different apps save newly created/edited files to different places (2) many users are clueless about navigating the file system within the Save As dialog (3) many users rely on an app's Recent list (4) many users don't know how to search their own file systems.
(1) Some apps always want to Save As to the Documents folder. Some always want to Save As to wherever you finished off your previous Save As. Some always want to Save As to the folder of the file you most recently opened in that app. Etc. No one can remember each app's convention.
(2) People don't realize they can navigate within Save As to someplace other than wherever the app feels like plopping the file by default at that moment. True even when shown over and over and over how to do this.
(3) Once you move a file, its entry in an app's Recent listing is probably borked. This sends people who rely on Recent for finding and opening files into a panic.
(4) They don't know how to click on the desktop and hit cmd-F or to click on Start->Find. And once they do, the Find window looks nothing like Google or a web browser. They don't understand what the various search criteria are or how to enter them. They don't know how to read the results.