this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2025
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As a non-Apple person: they are correct, but sometimes a metaphor fails and there is no better alternative.
I think I agree. The metaphor doesn't actually need to be perfect if everyone understood that UI mechanic like 40 years ago. I would've been confused about cutting files if I hadn't learned how it worked with text, but I had, so it was extremely easy to get what it meant for files for me.
Exactly.
It is interesting as the metaphor becomes reality though. Modern folks (and I mean anything post-gen-X) mostly don’t understand folders and especially filing cabinets, and that metaphor breaks badly with deep nesting, and symlinks/shortcuts and multiple different vies of the same content (e.g. google drive web vs desktop)…
It also leads to odd anachronisms like the floppy disk as save icon.
The thing is the metaphor was never perfect and it takes a long time to get enough people used to it, plus you have to be pretty consistent or people don’t realize the metaphor exists at all.