Twitter engineer and minimalism enthusiast Alex Payne writes with some passion on the subject of “everything buckets” – by which he means those apps into which you can throw pretty much everything.
You know the apps he means: the likes of Yojimbo, Evernote, Devonthink, and a dozen or so competitors. Database-powered shoe boxes into which you can chuck PDFs, web archives, bookmarks, plain or rich texts, anything really. And then search through the lot.
Alex thinks “everything buckets” aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. The proprietary databases they use might break; they add little that the OS X filesystem doesn’t offer:
“Everything Buckets are selling you a filesystem, and removing the step of creating and saving a new file within that filesystem. That’s their primary value. Whatever organization scheme they may claim to offer, you can replicate on the filesystem. I promise. Even tags (symlinks, aliases –œ look ’em up).”
I suppose he has a point, but I suspect there are many OS X users and Cult readers who will disagree with him. Yes you *can*, with a little effort, replicate most of what Yojimbo does by fiddling around with Automator actions, Smart folders, Spotlight comments and Finder windows; but let’s be honest, who has the time for all that, when Yojimbo (or any of the other apps Alex mentions) will do it all for you in an instant?
But that’s Alex’s point: the convenience of the app is what you’re trading your freedom (and particularly your *data structure*) for.
Over to you then, Cultists. Does Alex have a point? Or will he have to prise your Yojimbo archive / Devonthink database / Evernote note collection from your cold, dead hands?
Me? I’ve still got a Yojimbo bookmarklet and I’m gonna use it.
