Defaults Are Important

An article titled Don’t Pollute User Space reminded me of something I love about Mac OS X.

Here is the default folder structure of an user in Windows Vista:

    \Users\User\        (\AppData)           \Local           \Roaming        \Contacts        \Desktop        \Documents        \Downloads        \Favorites        \Links        \Music        \Pictures        \Saved Games        \Searches        \Videos

And this is what user folder looks like in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard:

   /Users/Usernme/    /Desktop    /Documents    /Downloads         /Library         /Movies         /Music         /Pictures         /Public         /Sites

The Sites-directory is only one that I doubt most of Mac users need, but all the other ones are really needed and they make organizing easier, not harder.

Best thing about this, however, is that Mac users tend to actually use the given structure. Maybe it’s because Windows apps are so shitty that almost every Windows user that I know don’t actually keep their data in My Documents (or Documents in Vista) but instead scattered around the machine. (My data was, too, when I was a Windows user, many years ago.)

Good defaults are important.