Twitter developer Alex Payne recently criticized apps like ShoveBox, lumping them into a category he calls “everything buckets”:
The Mac software ecosystem faces a plague. A plague of Everything Buckets… These applications claim to be “your outboard brain” or “your digital filing cabinet” or similar. They go by many names: Yojimbo, Together, ShoveBox, Evernote, DEVONthink. …
An Everything Bucket, since you‘re probably wondering, is what I call applications that encourage the user to throw anything and everything into them. They‘re virtual scrapbooks, applying a lightweight organization system to (often) unrelated data of varying types.
He goes on to make essentially two arguments that get muddled a bit:
- Computers work best with structured data.
- Use the filesystem, you dolts!
My counter-argument is:
- Structured data is not always best for users. Software should be designed around users first, and computers second.
- While, ideally, it would be best if programs manipulated data closer to the file/directory level, there are some deep problems, some technical and some psychological, with the way the Mac OS and its applications work with the filesystem.
Structured Data Isn’t Always Best
Structured data is great when you know what structure your data needs to take. And even when you do know, the trouble is there’s an up-front cost to capturing it that isn’t always amortized over the rest of the life of the data.
What I like about ShoveBox and even my competitors’ apps is that I can quickly enter in some data that’s nothing more than a thought, an AIM handle, an interesting article I plan to read later, or even print a receipt to it.
Then, at the end of the day, I can quickly drag these bits and pieces into todo list programs, address books, web apps, and more. I can take the time to massage the data a bit so it fits into other systems. Or I can delete it and decide it wasn’t worth it.
Being a east coast guy myself, I’m convinced that the "Worse Is Better" philosophy of engineering is right on a lot of things.
Does anyone remember when search engines used to look like this?
Google didn’t become popular because it had a powerful interface for nested Boolean queries and let you specify where to look for your query within each document. It became popular because of a very simple, unstructured approach.
It ended up being great for users, but it certainly wasn’t the easiest thing for a computer. It required vast infrastructure, not to mention some incredible linear algebra. Users don’t care what’s easiest for computers; users care about what’s easiest for users.
And though it makes geeks cringe, Excel is probably the most popular database, despite not being a database at all. It’s simple and you can whip together solutions around loosely-structured data in an ad hoc, generative fashion. Huge departments in multinational banks rely on Excel rather than custom solutions, just because it’s the easiest to start using.
The idea of rich structured data is very appealing to engineers like Alex and I. It’s nice to think of a world where every one of my documents has rich (correct) metadata, where I can strew my data all over my disk (and cloud-based sites) and still pinpoint them in seconds.1
But the fact is, most people don’t have time for rich metadata and consistent, taxonomically-satisfying structure. They just want to get their work done.
And even as we find better ways of entering and using structured data, there will always be classes of data that are best left unstructured. That ill-defined category of data is what ShoveBox was made for.
The Trouble With The Filesystem and the Windowsization of the Mac OS
Before I continue, I should emphatically state that ShoveBox is not meant as a replacement for the Finder. It’s not a file-management tool. It imports data in a great many ways, and the only reason you can drag certain types of files into it is that, well, it’d be a shame if you couldn’t.
The term “Everything Bucket” is a slight misnomer — if you’re putting truly everything you work with in it, and keeping it there, you’re not using it correctly.
But from listening to developers of ShoveBox-like apps, I can tell we all get inundated with requests from users who are misusing our apps. For instance, the Yojimbo release notes pleads “Please do not try to replace iPhoto, Aperture, or Lightroom with Yojimbo: You’ll make us cry.”
It seems to me that that the problem that Mac users and fellow developers of “everything buckets” are groping around in the dark to solve is that, out of the box, the Mac OS’s tools for managing data are unsatisfying and confusing. But to be fair, I think most novice users find the very idea of a filesystem unsatisfying and confusing.
But It Wasn’t Always
When the Mac came out, it didn’t have directories, it had folders (and, originally, only one level of them!). It didn’t have rm, it had a Trash. It didn’t have symlinks, and when it finally did in System 7, it called them aliases. It didn’t have a tools menu, it had desk accessories. And everything had an adorable Susan Kare-designed icon for it.
The innovation here was not the desktop metaphor, but its implementation. Everything was concrete, visual, and almost tactile. Windows stayed where you put them when you closed them. Icons didn’t sort themselves. One window, one folder. One file, one icon. And there were almost no modes.
Windows has never optimized its folder structure very well for users, and tries to discourage direct manipulation of the file system. Programs are free to dump files in any location they please, even to the extent where many programs on Windows won’t run on a non-Administrator user account.
In fact, in recent versions of Windows, when you first open up your C:/ drive, it warns you before even allowing you to see the contents. As if to say “What are you doing, Dave?” (though, in its defense, it does say “My Computer” not “Your Computer.”)
The Mac has remained fairly resolute in making the filesystem and its folder structure something users feel comfortable taking a stroll around. Even files nestled deep in /System/Library have beautiful, seldom-seen icons to convey a little of what they’re actually for. And thank goodness, drives still mount on the Desktop and don’t warn me when I try to open them. But it’s definitely yielded to external pressures.
I’ve never been one of those whiners saying that the Finder is broken, but I think it plays a large part. Some have complained that it’s moving away from its spatial roots.
Back/forward buttons, column view, Smart Folders, Cover Flow, QuickLook, Stacks, and others are all very handy features that have clear uses. But they dilute the wonderful concreteness of the Desktop metaphor with abstraction.
Oh — and when I open my Documents folder, the number of files that I remember putting there myself are outnumbered by those that I don’t. Microsoft Office put a 150 MB folder in there whose purpose I’m not sure of. Any EA game I install puts one or more folders in there as well. And iChat, Colloquy, and Linkinus seem to find it a good place to dump log files.
I don’t always feel comfortable using it directly2, and I’m a computer nerd, for crying out loud!
There’s something comforting and pleasing in using an app like ShoveBox or Yojimbo for everyday files, even though it’s not a terribly good idea.
For a lot of users, it’s kind of like living with some inconsiderate housemates, finding a shelf in the kitchen, and agreeing “If it’s on this shelf, it’s mine. Don’t touch it.” It’s a secure place with a well-thought-out, consistent, streamlined interface. And best of all, Microsoft Office won’t swagger in at 4AM and mistake it for a sink.
The Awkward End of the Desktop Metaphor
We’ve seen consumer-oriented apps from Apple that abstract away the filesystem entirely. iTunes doesn’t play MP3s, it plays music. iPhoto doesn’t organize JPEGs, it organizes photos. Part of the reason for this is that they are not presumptuous enough to assume basic computer skills on the part of the user. The other reason is that tying it closer to the filesystem would make their interfaces less apt for what they’re supposed to be doing.
Spotlight is firmly in the camp of "one file, one datum" and Apple apps that disagree with this have either been forcibly converted to this philosophy or provided a Spotlight interface through a rather inelegant hack (take a look in your ~/Library/Caches/Metadata folder).
We’re in an awkward phase in user interface design where the desktop metaphor is dying but there is no clear successor. More abstract ways to deal with data have been gradually introduced, but we’re still in a sort of limbo.
Do we return to spatial ways of dealing with files, or are the abstract ones better?3 Do we try to keep data structured, or do we free it? Should the filesystem be more like a database to the end user, or should it be left as is? Is flat better than hierarchical?
I do feel odd writing an additional layer of indirection on top of what seems, superficially to be a perfectly fine metaphor. But it wouldn’t be necessary if “pieces of paper in manila file folders” was the best way to think about everything.
Maybe some things are best as messages in an inbox, others points on a map, others monsters in a dungeon, some as crazy zooming squares, and still others as rows in a database. The future will tell.
Alex paints these apps together with a sort of broad brush, but they’re quite different. Developers of apps like ShoveBox, Evernote, and Yojimbo recognize a major problem that many users have dealing with certain kinds of data. We’re all contributing ideas to a vast, distributed, multi-developer experiment on the Mac platform.
Even the lovely Together, probably the closest to the Finder of any of these apps, has a tremendous following that I envy.
ShoveBox’s contribution to the experiment is trying to apply the email client metaphor (inboxes, flags, sorting rules, etc) to unstructured data. And, if I may say so myself, I think it’s the most streamlined app in the category.
But judging by the vast, diverse preponderance of “everything buckets”, there’s a real need here. We’re all just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, and learning more about how to work with computers more productively in the process.
Footnotes
- As an aside, that isn’t to say we’re not getting closer to that reality — one positive example of structured data succeeding is Facebook. It astounds me that the average college kid, still hungover from the night before, will tag their photos with metadata about who’s in them. This, along with other aspects of Facebook, strikes me as a huge win for structured data.
- I’ve carved out a few sub-folders in my Documents folder that I keep in my Finder sidebar: Projects, Schoolwork, and Resources.
- When I compare abstract versus concrete, I’m not talking about having an abstraction versus not having one. Clearly, any user interface for dealing with data is a way to take magnetic particles on spinning platters and make them more understandable. When I say concrete, I’m referring to interfaces that mimic the physical world versus the mental world.
Tell him to go read A Perfect Mess: http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Mess-Benefits-Cluttered-Fly/dp/0316114758
Great post, Dan.
If computers are engaging in metaphors they reflect the real world. In the early 80’s, the Desktop and File Cabinet was probably a really good, common metaphor. These days everybody is trying to GTD, and they all have ’single collecting area’s. That “Everything Buckets” should have emerged concurrently should surprise few aware of how people are working.
And yeah, my gosh, that’s what we have the ~/Library/Application Support folder for. Barbarians, lay off my ~/Documents!
I really enjoyed your post! How’s east coast guy enjoying Silicon Valley?
Beautiful write-up. Very entertaining read.
Thanks!
Heaj Dan!!
Really great post! While i do not use any apps like yours, i really like the concept of them…
I simply do not use such software to retain my beloved procrastination =)
My point of view in this matter is quite radical: i’m deeply convinced that the filesystem as we know it is really *bad* stuff, and it’s one of the first things i’d want to redesign, if i were some OS developer.
We do not organize stuff, in terms of trees abstraction, even computers don’t – {sym,hard} links prove that, rendering the filesystem *tree* actually a (messy) *graph* – so what’s the point of it!
What i would like? A “filesystem” that is completely relational, with no path concept, with a system-wide taxonomy of attributes for “files”, and a graphical interface much more in the sense of Aperture or iTunes than the Finder one.
Maybe i’d have to write something to expand on that concept…
However, good luck with your software, and do not mind haters, they do not deserve it =D.
“Alex paints these apps together with a sort of broad brush, but they’re quite different.”
Well, Alex is a smart guy, but the whole article is bathed with a broad brush. People have different needs. In some cases, the finder is plenty. But if a user enjoys the features of one of these programs, or feels more comfortable using them then they should. To take all their usage scenarios and say they’d be better off with the finder and they’re wasting their money is nonsense.
But yes, my biggest gripe is his inclusion of Shovebox with the rest. I use shovebox for a temporary storage place for files I’m not sure what to do with yet, notes I’ve just jotted down, etc. Could be a bookmark, could be a recipe, but shovebox does a great job of giving someplace to shove it until I decide to delete it, file it away, email it, decide if it’s important, etc.
In other words, using shovebox this way, there’s no way I’d be happy using any system involving the finder and spotlight, nothing that would come close to doing it as well as shovebox. It doesn’t matter if I agree with Alex about using the finder or decide to use devonthink. I still have a need for shovebox. I would have paid twice the cost for it.
When I first started using shovebox, I thought it was just a menu bar yojimbo. It took me a while to see how wonderfully it fit into my work flow. I’m guessing Alex has probably used most of these programs superficially, and just lumped them together. But it is a little misleading, and in my opinion, a little unfair to shovebox, since as you said, it isn’t replacing the finder. It’s the perfect sidekick for it.
The folks who follow Getting Things Done like a religion will tell you that the first step for any todo is to either file them properly under the (structured) context and project they belong to… or, if you don’t have time for that, dump them in the generic “inbox” (or, of course, just do the todo).
GTD then says, any time you have a moment to get something done, you should look at your inbox first… and either do those items, or properly file them. Otherwise, your inbox will become unmanageable.
I can see Shove Box working very well as a bit of an online inbox. If you don’t sift through it once in a while, then it can become a write-once-read-never storage. But, when you do sift through it, it works as a good way to organize those things that you want to sift through soon, but not right now.
gmail works better than a regular email program because it encourages you not to structure your emails.
I agree with other commenters in disagreeing with Alex. I do use specialist apps like iPhoto, iTunes, and Bookpedia because I know what a photo, sound file, or book is, and I have a lot of them. Apps like Yojimbo (and Shovebox, I believe) handle other things that would fall through the cracks.
I am new to Shovebox (literally about 15 minutes) and would appreciate enlightenment on Gary’s comment: “When I first started using shovebox, I thought it was just a menu bar yojimbo.” That’s what I thought until I saw Gary’s comment. What would be a better way to view Shovebox?
“What i would like? A “filesystem” that is completely relational, with no path concept, with a system-wide taxonomy of attributes for “files”, and a graphical interface much more in the sense of Aperture or iTunes than the Finder one.
Maybe i’d have to write something to expand on that concept…”
It falls down on the “no path concept” criterion, but how does Leap strike you overall?
I tested ShoveBox for a few days following Andy Ihnatko’s recommendation. I tried doing without after reading Alex Payne’s article. Coming back here to register ShoveBox, I was fascinated to find a post outlining the reasons I came back: I need a place to put things until I know where to put them.
It’s a shame that the name Inbox is already taken: much confusion could have been avoided. Thanks for a great app … and a good argument.
Rick,
To answer your question, ShoveBox and Yojimbo hold a few aspects in common, but are designed for different things. In fact, some customers happily use both apps.
ShoveBox is designed more around the idea of clippings. Small pieces of information that you can store and access quickly. The entire interface is oriented around minimizing the friction in this process and integrating well with your existing apps. Some people keep frequently-used scraps of info for a long time in there, which it is fine for, but it is largely designed for more transient and temporary pieces of information. A phone number. A listing for an apartment you’re thinking of taking. A rogue thought for a new project that occurred while something else demanding most of your attention. The idea here is that, while you may use ShoveBox throughout your entire day, it’s not supposed to be something you really notice, or spend time “in.”
> In fact, some customers happily use both apps.
Thanks for the response. I would really like to know how people distinguish their uses of both apps.
I usually find Andy Ihnatko spot on but I must say I didn’t really get his thing about “having to go into Yojimbo-land” to file things away. I imagine most people copy a piece of text, press a hot key, and then press return to file it away if they’re in a hurry. Shovebox wins out in the speed stakes by 1 key press: you don’t need to press Return to make sure something is actually saved. I can imagine that, if you often forget to do that final Return press, Shovebox represents a significant advance; otherwise, Dan’s comment (and the original motivation for the programme) regarding different kinds of data in different programmes sounds more pertinent to me. But I still don’t completely understand the conceptual difference with Yojimbo/Together/EagleFiler in terms of transience. Is the idea that it’s difficult to delete things from Yojimbo once they’re in there (not necessarily in a technical sense, but psychologically)?
“I usually find Andy Ihnatko spot on but I must say I didn’t really get his thing about “having to go into Yojimbo-land” to file things away. I imagine most people copy a piece of text, press a hot key, and then press return to file it away if they’re in a hurry.”
I don’t really think of filing things away in shovebox. When it’s time to file it away, if it’s ever filed, I export it. Shovebox just seems lighter, quicker, easier to use than Yojimbo. Yojimbo is longer term, shovebox shorter. Of course, I could use yojimbo for both, but I prefer using applications geared more to one purpose.
That said, I’ve read Dan (on twitter) say that he’ll eventually (probably) be adding subfolders and tagging. At that point it does become yojimbo, and the whole “about shovebox” page doesn’t ring true. Color me a little worried.
That’s the problem with applications like shovebox. The beauty is the simplicity, yet everyone wants ‘one more feature’. And it’s rare to find a developer that can say no.
Hi Gary,
You’re the first actual user to worry there are too many features in the app
.
Every day, I’m inundated with feature requests that I don’t want to do. Subfolders especially are one of those things that wouldn’t take long to add, but complicate things slightly. Part of the reason I didn’t do this on 1.0 was to sort of force people to be simple in how they organize things in the app and not really keep things filed in it permanently. Same with smart folders.
But there are few users who can really grasp the type of design decisions a developer makes (which is fine). This means that, while I’m always trying to minimize the complexity of features and deliver as polished a UX as possible, I have to occasionally remind myself that I get paid for solving people’s problems, not for making objets d’art.
Ideally, I can manage to implement some of these new features in an intelligent way. For instance, I find flagging, tagging, and labeling incredibly redundant and am looking to reduce these into a single system if possible.
It’s quite a tightrope, though.
I should also mention that one of the approaches I’m investigating for 2.0 is making some of these features plugins that are disabled by default or even uninstalled.
Dan,
I tried emailing, but received no response. I registered Shovebox more than a week ago. Should I have received an automated serial number email or similar? Nothing so far.
Thanks,
David J. Downs
David,
I’ll investigate this matter shortly — I currently have a huge backlog of support email.
In the meantime, please check your spam filter for the registration email from a week ago.
Dan
“You’re the first actual user to worry there are too many features in the app
.”
Well, that doesn’t surprise me. Simplicity is a feature that’s more abstract, or less tangible, than subfolders, and even most users who value it wish their favorite application had just that ‘one more feature’ that would make it perfect. Problem is, everyone has a different one more feature. Lastly, users who are satisfied with an application generally stay quiet and simply use it. I guess I’m the exception
“But there are few users who can really grasp the type of design decisions a developer makes (which is fine). This means that, while I’m always trying to minimize the complexity of features and deliver as polished a UX as possible, I have to occasionally remind myself that I get paid for solving people’s problems, not for making objets d’art.”
Yeah, I understand that. Features can help the developer reach a larger audience. The greatest application in the world is worthless if it doesn’t allow you to pay the bills. I’ve seen dozens of software companies/developers struggle with those kind of decisions.
I’ve seen users call for subfolders in yojimbo since its release, and so far barebones hasn’t gone down that road. I’m sure they’ve lost customers because of that decision, but it’s also a very successful application, and I’d say part of it is the simplicity. I read somewhere that the more options and features added the less control the developer has of the users experience. I think there’s validity in that statement.
But If I came off strictly against features, I apologize. I’d love to be able to reorder the left pane folders, and I’m a big fan of tagging and would love to use tags with rules. And while I’m a big fan of shovebox now, I’m sure you’ll do a great job of making it better. I can’t wait to see what comes next.
IMHO, the challenge comes as you make shovebox more like the applications it now stands beside. Andy Ihnatko said he liked shovebox because he didn’t have to go into yojimboland. And in this thread we’ve talked about using shovebox in addition to yojimbo. And you’ve said you didn’t think of shovebox as being used for long term filing. But with the additions of tags and subfolders the difference between shovebox and something like yojimbo because very small and puts them more in direct competition. I guess what I’m saying is that there’s a small line between adding features and making an application more robust and turning that application into something different entirely.
But I look forward to your decisions. Good luck
I like the idea of tags better than the idea of either labels or folders. IMHO, labels, folders, and flags are made redundant by a Things-like tagging system. This would be really cool if these tags could be translated into OpenMeta tags on export from Shovebox.
Having regular destinations for files and notes is also an interesting thought. I don’t know how you would pull it off, but making it easier to send the relevant data to another application in a clear way would be a killer feature in an inbox app.
I once found myself trying apps like Yojimbo, Together, Journler, and what-have-you, simply because they were there. And after a while I realised, in an epiphany which released me from their thrall, that there was absolutely no reason to use them. I could keep stuff in folders. It felt more secure, and it felt more “mine”.
There is room in my interface for MacJournal, which I use as a text/image repository (mainly text, if I’m honest) rather than a blogging tool. But that’s about it. Events and ToDos belong in iCal, mail messages in Mail, photos in iPhoto/Aperture, blah-de-blah. The problem with the so-called “Everything Buckets” is that they do just that: try to be for everything, and that just doesn’t work. Particular apps for storing particular types of data, yes – even with a little cross-fertilisation – but those “All In One” apps have now long been deleted. I felt like I was building an weak Finderette on top of the real one. I was eating the menu.
A similar horror story involving the concept “Things To Do” is now unfolding in a hundred iPhone apps, each with their own sync nightmare (”Is it an event, or a ToDo – Aargh I won’t sleep until I work it out!”).
ShoveBox functions well as a sort of “short term memory” – a metaphor I was surprised you didn’t mention. Or you could use the metaphor of “digestion” for it: current stuff (again, mainly text) gets sifted and evaluated, and the good remaineth and gets put in its place, while the bad gets throweth awayeth. But trying to place *everything* into short-term memory is just plain wrong – a lot of things, to me, decidedly belong in folders and can just get plonked there. Organisation for the sake of it is a plain waste of time.
P.S. Why oh why has ShoveBox for iPhone got no xxing search function!?
I just read Alex’s article and then stumbled across this post. I really liked your take on things. I use both ShoveBox and Together, but I wouldn’t consider ShoveBox to be an “Everything Bucket”. Like others have said, I use it as temporary storage for bits of information that I’ll either delete after it’s needed or store away in Together for reference. I don’t see any way to get this functionality in the Finder, so I’m really grateful for your program. Great job!