> They are 100% correct about the spatial Finder; 15 years later and what the current OS has is still laughable compared to some of the gems of the Classic Finder.

And every version that comes out, the Finder moves further away from spacial and towards a disk browser. I hate it so much.

> I don’t quite understand why Apple went so far away from Platinum.

For the purpose of looking cool in a demo. OS9 had Platinum, and it was the standard, and third party apps that didn't fall in line, really stuck out in an uncomplimentary way and collected a lot of flack.

Since then, OSX has gone through... how many re-skinnings? How many optional app UI kits? Do you remember the brushed aluminium one that was popular for a minute? Remember all of their one-off, over the top, skeuomorphic apps? Now Chrome can get all fucky with the title bar and no one even notices. And one of Apple's own flagship apps, iTunes, is such a user-surly, confused mess of UI mistakes it's hardly usable.

> not to mention the pop-up tab windows from 8.5+.

Finder Drawers! I miss them too. I especially miss the huge contextual menu ecosystem that OS9 had. Anyone else miss WindowShade?

As someone who grew up with Mac OS 7.5.2, 8.5 and 9.1, then 10.3, 10.4, 10.5.8 then 10.6 and the upgrade train ever since... I honestly can't remember Finder being much different to how it is now except the obvious added features. I certainly can't remember it having lost features in the last >20 years.

Can you give details?

Read John Siracusa's Spatial Finder rants in his OS X reviews for Ars Technica for more details than you could ever want

http://archive.arstechnica.com/paedia/f/finder/finder-1.htm ???

If you read this, note that although the main page displays, their section links are broken (they all use ".html" instead of ".htm"; after you click one, you can edit it in your URL bar to use ".htm" and then it will display).

Try this link: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2003/04/finder/

Compared to the UI used between 1984 and the launch of Mac OS 8 in 1997, Platinum itself was a short-lived re-skinning. The 1984 UI was colorized in 1991 with System 7 and only fully reskinned in 1997, a 13 year span. Mac OS X is 15 years old now, for contrast--plenty of time to fit in a few reskins.

Not really sure the numbers make the point you're suggesting they do.

The "Classic" Mac OS UI developed incrementally over about 15 years, in a mostly evolutionary process. Even Platinum wasn't an especially dramatic change except in the context of that conservatism. But over the product's lifespan, it represented significant improvements.

Over about the same amount of time, OS X has ping-ponged around, undergoing a series of major reskins, without much in the way of consistent direction. It seems to be a lot of change-for-change's-sake, and it's not clear to me as a user throughout the entire period that the end result now, in 2016, is all that much better than where we started out back in 2000.

Apple's had nearly as much time with OS X's Aqua UI as they had to take the Classic interface from its start (512x342 1-bit pixels on the 128k) all the way to Platinum, and the results are not exactly impressive.

Platinum was a very dramatic reskin at the time. It was originally designed to set Copland apart from System 7, but after Copland failed they just rolled it out in Mac OS 8. Aqua was then designed to set Mac OS X apart from Mac OS 8/9.

Overall Platinum lasted four years, which was just as long as the brushed metal phase between Panther and Leopard (2003-2007). Leopard was the next major revamp, which lasted until Yosemite (2007-2014).

So, if you wanted to be generous, you could divide the Mac UI eras like so:

1984-1991: Monochrome Classic

1991-1997: System 7 (colorized)

1997-2001: Platinum

2001-2003: Aqua

2003-2007: Aqua (Brushed Metal Remix)

2007-2014: Aqua 3.0

2014-pres: Flat Aqua

Don't forget that Platinum was unveiled years before OS 8 was actually released, and one of the most popular System 7 extensions was Aaron, which provided the Platinum theme, and as such a large contingent of Mac users were using Platinum long before OS 8 came out.

I remember installing Aaron when it first came out, and I don't think I ever uninstalled it (though I remember playing around with the Hi-Tech version that Apple's lawyers killed).

That's right! In fact, Aaron was used to provide the Platinum theme on Jeff Goldblum's character's PowerBook in Independence Day.

Oh hell yes! I loved Aaron too.

> Remember all of their one-off, over the top, skeuomorphic apps?

I actually liked those a lot. They were the only things I've seen in my adult life that brought back the sense of fun and whimsy I had when I first used a Mac as a little kid.

Even though I never actually bought one (because I don't like walled gardens), I used to go into the Apple Store often just to play with the skeumorphic apps on the iPad. If iOS wasn't such a walled garden, I probably would have bought an original iPad just to play with those apps at home.

> Anyone else miss WindowShade?

Oddly enough, I've seen it pop up on Linux desktops for ages. It's still part of KDE, and even in 2016 I can shade my windows by double-clicking on the titlebars like God intended.

> > Remember all of their one-off, over the top, skeuomorphic apps?

> I actually liked those a lot.

I also liked them, and I think skeuomorphism is a good idea, generally. And I think iOS's completely anti-skeuomorphic abstraction is a bad idea, generally. And I get why Chrome ate my title bar. But is it a good idea for users to have to learn different UI metaphors for every app? I feel like one of classic MacOS's real strengths was that there was ONE UI and users were really skeptical of any app that broke the rules.

> > Anyone else miss WindowShade?

> Oddly enough, I've seen it pop up on Linux desktops for ages.

If memory serves, that feature originally came from Linux/X-Windows, was added to MacOS as an extension first, and then incorporated in the official OS. (And then discarded)

I'm not an Apple user. One day I had to install or upgrade some software (I don't remember exactly), on a Mac. The instructions said that I had to first start iTunes. That's a program for playing music, right? You can imagine how underwhelmed I was by the UX on this so-called user-friendly platform. Since then, I never felt any urge to switch to or even try out an Apple product.

That's pretty laughable, yes. They also needed Itunes to factory reset an Ipad.

> That's a program for playing music, right?

I wish. That feature is practically abandoned. I use WinAmp to play music. I so wish I was kidding. The iTunes app is horrendous.

> From small details (like EVERY window remembering exactly how you arranged it)

This—along with the rest of the 2d layout—is my absolute least favorite aspect of the finder. If I could completely disable that (along with the .DS_store and __MACOSX absurdities) and force everything to use three-column layout, I would in a heartbeat. It's just a recipe to PREVENT easy access to your data—how can they allow dragging icons out of the view or overlapping each other? You can't even "reload" to reset their location, and people can even send you ZIPPED FILES where the locations are broken. Coverflow is even worse for usability. I have no idea how people can work with either icons or no ability to switch up the sorting on demand—I don't think I've used my desktop except as basically a "tmp" folder for screenshots in years. Why not just use launchpad as the desktop? Does anyone actually use their desktop to store often accessed files, or is it just a replacement for ~/Documents at this point?

I wish they would give ANY love to the finder at this point. I don't care how it's written; it's gotten steadily less usable with every iteration.

As you may know, the presentation mode for macOS Finder windows and tabs can rapidly be changed. Command 1 for icon view, Command 2 for list view, Command 3 for column view, and Command 4 Cover Flow. Each has its uses, including Cover Flow.

The ability to rapidly switch modes means I can, for example, use column view to drill down into deeply nested directories that contain thousands of automatically generated screenshots. When I'm in the directory I want, I then can choose Cover Flow view and use it to navigate a directory containing thousands of images to find the image that I want.

That is, if the images are very similar with subtle differences, I can relatively quickly find the state I'm looking for by scanning for changes using Cover Flow and scrolling left or right.

If I need to sort on demand, I can simply type Command 2 to access list view and then click on the column by which I'd like to sort. I can type Command-J and add additional columns if the one I need is not already visible.

Basically, the different Finder view modes are not one-size-fits-every-task. Many people never have an opportunity or take the time to understand how the different presentations of the file hierarchy can provide different features. Some users swear allegiance to the CLI (technically not a GUI). Others insist on list view. Still others insist that column view is the best way.

But there are some people who use different GUI modes depending on their purpose. I know I do. Personally, I'm grateful that the macOS Finder has several modes for presenting the same data because each mode provides a different set of features and I depend on these features in different ways at different times.

EDIT: grammar, clarity

> You can't even "reload" to reset their location

You can.

Right-Click/Cmd-Click > Arrange By... or Clean Up By...

You dislike the particular compromises made to implement a bad version of the ideal. That does not mean the ideal is to be avoided, just that it is more complicated to achieve than the OSX team was willing to implement.

I'm not sure how you're meaning "ideal". The point of my post was to illustrate that while some may prefer the "spatial" finder, others (such as my self) view that as the absolute worst behavior of the finder. So there are clearly two distinct ideals at play here, and the compromise sucks for both parties.

I agree with all of your points and would add:

1. Why is it so hard to keep track of recently recently touched files and folders in Finder?

2. Why does the save/open dialogue constantly forget where I was just saving/opening stuff?

3. Why doesn't opening a new tab open to your current location instead of ~/?

4. Why can't I completely customize the sidebar in a Finder window?

5. Why isn't there a native window switcher keyboard mapping?

6. Why do menubar items just vanish without a trace when menus need horizontal space?

I could go on but these things persist as problems for years while Apple focuses its efforts on superficial UI gimmicks.

1. Go to All My Files and order by date in list view perhaps?

2. Dependent on the application. Eg. for wxWidgets (which wraps Cocoa) you have to supply the default directory when the dialog is created. If you are a poor coder, you'll put a dumb value in here instead of remembering the CWD or recently used dir, hence the dialog showing the wrong dir all the time. It's basically down to each app to tell the dialog where it should start.

3. Not sure on this one - I thought it was a preference.

4. You can remove and add stuff - what else did you want to do? You wouldn't want that horrible places/links area of Windows 10's Explorer would you? It's horrible.

5. cmd-' I think, to switch windows inside the current app. Alternatively I map my bottom right screen zone as "show all windows", and map ctrl-up to do the same.

6. Daft isn't it? The menu font should decrease perhaps. The difficulty is I have loads of stuff in the menubar top right (sort of like Windows taskbar) so what can the menu do if it runs out of space?

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

1. Works but no way to include recent directories. I've tried smart search queries for this but it doesn't work. I usually need to recall locations of groups of files more so than a stream of touched files. Also, what if I want to create multiple versions of this with various filters. Again, saved searches don't work (or at least didn't when I tried it).

2. This is true, but obviously leaving it up to devs is a failed strategy that Apple should take control of.

3. There's a silly option to right click on the path at the bottom to open current location in a new tab but no global pref that I'm aware of. It seems like an easy one to implement!

4. I want that list of recently-touched folders in the sidebar.

5. It works but only within the current app, so you need to alternate between cmd-' and cmd-tab. I want something like witch. It's one thing windows does better.

6. They should collapse into a menu, similar to bartender.

Point 1 - what a pity! On Windows we can use Everything which uses the NTFS index to do really fast searches; it is a pity there isn't the same function on Mac OS filesystem (as far as I know).

Note that point 2 is the same problem on any OS - if you open a file dialog, you have to supply the working directory for the dialog so it affects Mac OS, Windows, Linux etc.

It isn't a problem that Apple should take care of - who says the dialog box should always go back to the same directory? In some cases it might not be required, which is why they leave it up to the application devs. Tell your app devs to stop being so lazy.

For point 5, it is debatable. On Windows if you have multiple non-modal (or even modal) dialogs open as children of an application, Windows can sometimes get the Z order wrong and there is no way to alt-tab to that window, as alt-tabbing shows the parent window. So having a window switch option would be great (actually Windows 10 fixes this a bit with its Windows-tab overview system).

I started wondering if there is no solution to this, so I posted a question to AskDifferent. This is the solution that was suggested and it looks extremely promising: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4unOC5ZDT98

> 1. Why is it so hard to keep track of recently recently touched files and folders in Finder?

This one's sort of on the user. Not sure how it could be simplified.

> 2. Why does the save/open dialogue constantly forget where I was just saving/opening stuff?

This is dependent on the application doing the saving, not on the Finder. Some applications are very good at remembering last-saved location. Photoshop and BBEdit are good examples of this, especially Photoshop which has per-menu-item preferences for things like Open, Save, and Export. However, many applications have developers not familiar with macOS conventions and so don't provide such affordances (I won't single out any applications because they really are too numerous to mention.)

> 3. Why doesn't opening a new tab open to your current location instead of ~/?

This is customizable in Finder > Preferences… I'm not sure what you mean by "current location". If you mean duplicate where you are now there are other ways to do it.

I personally have a AppleScript that copies my current POSIX path to my clipboard. I type Command T to open a new tab, Type Command-Shift G to "Go to Folder" and type Command V to paste what's on my clipboard.

But I'm not sure that's what you're looking for. You might head on over to http://discussions.apple.com and ask over there.

> 4. Why can't I completely customize the sidebar in a Finder window?

Yeah the customizability is restricted, mainly because letting it be too customizable means inexperienced users can get their sidebar where it's next to impossible to provide support. That said, advanced users usually know that the sidebar is only to store a few handy items. I mainly use it only for visual confirmation that my remote mounts and local disks are mounted.

I use keyboard shortcuts to navigate the file system in the Finder.

> 5. Why isn't there a native window switcher keyboard mapping?

I think you're looking for Command ` and Command-shift `. This works pretty much system wide (except for a few applications by software vendors that. Just. Refuse. Native. Keyboard shortcuts.)

> 6. Why do menubar items just vanish without a trace when menus need horizontal space?

Do you mean that your menubar is so crowded that you lose menu items? I think I recall this happening and, to be honest, I don't have any solutions here. You might head on over to http://discussions.apple.com. People can be really helpful there.

Good luck.

I hate Launchpad. You can organise any of the icons by name or date etc., just manually. Clicking around a grid of many icons is no fun (I am sure it is easy on a fresh empty Mac). I use my Desktop for putting files I am working on before I have truly finished with them (sort of a TODO area). If they are out of sight, they go out of mind and I forget to deal with them.

And you can't even snap windows left-and-right like in other OS's. Apple is too caught up on trying to be that anti-establishment-use-different-key-combos-than-the-standard-and-forget-about-standardized-ports sort of workshop. They'd rather do it different than do it practical as it's done in Windows and Linux (well, depending on the Window manager). :)

Since the Macintosh predates Windows and Linux, it's arguably the Macintosh that set the standard and the others that are anti-establishment. :-)

Seriously, Apple is very unlikely to change the keyboard defaults to match Windows, since (among other reasons) it would unnecessarily aggravate long-time Mac users.

Edit: Long-pressing the green zoom button in El Capitan lets you move the window left or right to a half-full-screen view -- not exactly what you probably have in mind, but a reasonable approximation.

> since (among other reasons) it would unnecessarily aggravate long-time Mac users.

As if that has ever stopped them (see: Final Cut "Pro" X)

I assume that that doesn't take up a half-hour animation like going full-screen does?

I'm on 10.10 Yosemite, and have no desire to upgrade, since I'm sure that the annoying full-screen functionality is now slightly different and I'll have to spend a few minutes trying to figure out how to un-fuck it again.

> use-different-key-combos-than-the-standard

As someone who lives in the command line, the fact that they use the standard readline/emacs key combos is one of the few things I really appreciate about OSX.

For sure. And you can actually copy/paste normally in the command line without the use of the shift key.

Apple is different from the standard because the standard sucks. With macOS you get: CLI bindings on control, GUI bindings with command, and text entry with option and shift. The Windows equivalent is just a mess, even with an extra Windows™ key that ends up being mostly useless. And don't get me started on Ubuntu.

It's not just Emacs bindings, you can customize system-wide text area navigation (including any well-behaved apps)[1]. It's one of many things I appreciate about OSX.

[1]: http://xahlee.info/kbd/osx_keybinding.html

I think these boil down to personal preferences. My home/preferred OS is Mac, my work OS is Windows, and I find myself just preferring how macOS handles things just because it is more hands off in my opinion.

I disabled window snapping because I don't like the OS meddling with where I put windows - I dislike having hot-corners that activate when I don't intend them to, and it's frustrating to have things resize on me when I'm arranging windows for my viewing needs.

I also dislike having so much functionality on CTRL in windows since I find I get a lot of annoying unexpected behavior due to my own laziness. On OS X, typing short cuts are tied to CMD, but a few crucial editing shortcuts are tied to option, such as deleting the entire preceding word. On Windows, this is on CTRL and sometimes I screw up and don't release ctrl fast enough so it catches my next keystroke with CTRL and tries to perform a command. I grant this is my problem since I'm either too slow or fast and my hands are trained for an OS X keyboard, but it just makes more sense to my mind.

I don't think this is so much "anti-establishment" as much as just a different way of doing things, and I like the idea of keeping the commands separated a little. It's the same with alt-tabbing/cmd-tabbing - I understand the way Windows does it, but I like the way OS X does it better. CMD+Tab for apps, CMD+~ for windows within an app instead of all windows on the same...um...chain I guess.

It's not that I can't use Windows (quite the opposite), I just dislike it's attempts at convenience. I'm glad it's a setting, so I have no ill-will really, but I think it's just preference.

I've been pretty happy with this app for snapping windows: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/magnet/id441258766?mt=12

I like Spectacle, which looks like it has similar functionality to Magnet but is free and open source on GitHub:

https://www.spectacleapp.com/

https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle

> And you can't even snap windows left-and-right like in other OS's.

For apps that support split-view, you can do that in one of the following ways:

• The easiest is to just press and hold on a window's Green/Fullscreen button.

• Activate Mission Control, then drag a normal window to the desktop space of an existing fullscreen window.

• Activate Mission Control, then drag a window into a blank space at the top to make it fullscreen, then drag another window to that newly created desktop space to make them share it in split-view.

Mission Control can be activated by:

• Hard-dragging a window by its titlebar to outside the top of the screen to activate Mission Control.

* Pressing F3.

* Throwing the mouse cursor to a preset Hot Corner.

I install ShiftIt and use the keyboard to do that, just like Windows+left/right/up/down in Windows 7+.

The problem is that OS X Finder tries to support both Spatial and Browser modes. It has never separated the two modes properly, going all the way back to OS X 10.0, and as a result both Spatial mode and Browser mode are worse for it.

> From small details (like EVERY window remembering exactly how you arranged it) to not having to wonder what will happen when you click something

The problem is that Finder tries too hard to remember window sizes and positions when in Browser mode. Finder doesn't have a configurable browser window size. Instead, it stores the window size and position in each folder. So when you browse around to different folders you clobber any existing settings those folders may have had.

Try this: create a new folder on the Desktop and open it. It will be the non-configurable default Finder browser size that is way too small. Now use that browser to navigate to your home folder, etc. You've just clobbered your home folder window settings.

As a result, you never really know what size the Finder window is going to be when you open a folder.

OS X Finder needs to do the following:

- Embrace the differences between Spatial Mode and Browser Mode. Allow the user to choose whether they prefer Browser Mode or Spatial Mode. Command+N always opens a new Browser Window.

- Completely separate Spatial view settings and Browser view settings.

- A Browser window shall never affect the Spatial view settings for a folder.

- The default size of a Browser window needs to be user-customizable, and it must use the user's preferred size for every new Browser window. The size of the Browser window should never be dictated by a folder's Spatial window size or position.

- Provide menu items and keyboard shortcuts for the "Use as Defaults" command for setting the default view settings, as well as for reverting a folder's custom settings to the default view settings. If I enter a folder that has some goofy custom font sizes or column widths, I want to be able to hit a key and have it snap to my preferred layout.

Two words: Path Finder.

Its focus is still on being a file browser though, right? Last time I used it was even less about spatial features than the Finder, and more about cramming every possible gizmo into a single-window browser.

Amen.

I get exasperated that you still can't properly disable browser-type windows in the OS X Finder. Yes, you can press cmd-option-T to "Hide Toolbar", but 1 in 10 new windows still appears with the browser appearance - network drives, USB sticks, something you've unzipped, or just randomly because Finder feels like it.

I miss the whole spatial Finder, but if Apple could just give me an option for "no browser windows, ever", that would solve 80% of my angst. (Well, Finder-related angst, at any rate.)

And in recent versions, the zombie Preview pane. Still haven't figured out how to obliterate that thing for good.

I stop using Macs around 1994, so I remember the spatial finder existing but not how useful it was. I didn't come back to the Mac untill 10.4 was out and obviously by then it was gone.

I know John Siracusa really wants it back, but I couldn't remember how great it was.

Recently it hit me that iOS is completely spatial. I don't know where any of my apps are, except that they are on this location on the screen on this page of apps. The only way I can find them is by their spatial location. I'm not looking for Overcast, I'm looking for the thing that second from the bottom of the second page on the left-hand side. More than once I've opened an app and forgot what I was looking for until I opened it because I was only thinking about where it was in the interface.

Oh well. We'll probably never get it back.

One of the most annoying things to me about the Apple Watch is the fact that the icons tend to move around to random locations whenever an update is done. My eyesight is not up to par any more, and I rely on the app I need being in a particular spot on the cluster of tiny icons on my wrist, and when it moves, it is nigh on impossible to find quickly.

I appreciate the irony that the company touted for reinventing and improving UX is now setting fire to that legacy.

The bubble screen is terrible, but at least in watchOS 3 you're supposed to almost never have to use it.

It's one of those interfaces that looks great in the video and it's horrible to use in real life.

I dread the bubble screen. Having used watchOS 3 for months, I cannot remember having used it for months. It's just not how you do it anymore. You either pin apps in the dock, which is awesome, or as a complication on one of your watch faces. I currently have 5 watch faces I all use for different scenarios.

It's awesome compared to watchOS 2!

I'm VERY excited for today's upgrade.

What you describe about Finder is sadly similar with Windows Explorer. The tipping point was Explorer/Shell32 that came with Windows 2000. It remembered what you personalised for every folder, it had HTML support, it could be customised including the toolbar and the sidebar(s). If you entered a URL it transformed to Internet Explorer. It worked like that from Windows 95 (with ShellUpdate that came for free with IE4, and already integrated known as Win98) and lasted until Windows ME and 2000. WinXP wasn't bad, but several UI decision were bad. And the trend continued with Vista that had a stupid bare bone Explorer that forgot too many settings all the time (lack of love, and the halted complete rewrite in C# that had to be scrapped, and the missing WinFS were probably the reason). Win7 is like Vista but misses the advanced search menu, making the local search even more useless, and WinFS was declared dead. The UI of Win8/10 sucks, though some former undocumented hidden features of Explorer/shell were integrated to the Ribbon-bar.

The good thing about pre-Win10 you can replace Explorer.exe with your own favorite shell (file manager plus desktop in one exe).

The cool thing about Win32 UI is that it has very good optimisation for low latency, as it had to run on very low spec 1980s PCs. You can interact with the UI even before the UI is rendered on screen. So you can open a menu and navigate around and do some action, all with the keyboard as fast as you want even if the UI is slower on your system. MS got it completely backwards with WinRuntime aka UniversalApp. Opening the start menu in Win10 takes 500ms or so and the lag is very annoying, and opening most apps shows even a opening animation to hide that it takes way to long to get a useable app - open the calc.exe in Win7 and compare it to opening the calc app in Win10 - what a vast difference, what a complete failure and a huge step backward.

The best would be if a new MS manager would scrap the Win10 UI development incl UniversalAppFail (starting such an app takes more than 500ms wtf and shows a loading picture), and take the Win10 kernel and start development again taking the Windows 7 Shell/UI and for the Explorer take the Win 2000 or WinXP Explorer as base and start from there.

I thought XP's Explorer was the best, and it went downhill from there. I would have to agree with your appraisal of Windows 10's Explorer, which puts those stupid Action directory shortcuts back after every update, which I then to remove by forcing a registry key. I do not understand why you try and give users access to Documents and Downloads in 20 places and then hide the actual drives and directories, instead of educating users. Nobody struggled using Win 3.11 File Manager.

Calculator and Pictures are the big UniversalApp failures. Thank goodness you can use the bundled older Photo Viewer as it doesn't take minutes to start. Weirdly, UWP apps are just COM apps like everything else so why are they so slow????

I'll take Classic Mac OS Finder, BeOS FS UI, and NeXTSTEP UI over OS X Finder any day.

"They are 100% correct about the spatial Finder"

I never used OS9, so I don't know about this ...

Was the "spatial finder" still a hierarchical viewing of the underlying filesystem, just presented in a better fashion ?

Or was it non-hierarchical ?

Did OS9 even have a filesystem as I, a UNIX user, think of ? Or was that completely hidden with abstraction ?

"Spatial Finder" was still a hierarchical viewing of the filesystem, yes.

There are many articles on the subject, but the "spatial" was about the idea that files and folders "remembered" where you put them, so that the same file was always in the same (pixel-exact) space you chose to place it and folder windows remembered their exact same size, shape, and location on the screen. Regardless to how you navigated to them, but since on the Mac Classic OS the Desktop was the "root" folder, you typically navigated to your folders in the same physical way every time (to the point where you might muscle memorize where your files and folders "are" in the space layout of your screen).

As a Unix user it used to be you could get a basic spatial mode from Gnome's Nautilus, if you wanted to play with it, but it looks like Gnome File Manager dropped that feature somewhat recently.

Yeah, it's really weird how Windows and OS X have a 'loop' where the Desktop is a directory inside of your home directory.

OS9's file system was actually very similar to modern OS X (earlier incarnations of HFS). So it's an abstraction of a standard directory hierarchy, albeit a very elegant and disciplined one. The major difference under the hood was the presence of resource forks for various kinds of metadata and UI (icons, for example).