Q: I hate the new tags in Mavericks, need coloured folders!!

Not too may comments (complaints) lately -- I guess that means that users are getting used to Tags and the removal of Labels.

Yup, you know, I started off being really confused by the Tags impementation... But the power of Tags is in the ability to apply multiple Tags to one file/folder. And graphically this wouldn't work with the old approach, since there wouldn't be any way to show the multiple colours with the kind of fold highlighting they were using before.

So, yes, I'm getting used to Tags. They are actually quite useful and powerful, and there isn't necessarily any obvious way to improve the graphic approach.

Unfortunately, this may be too strongly stated. There is no serious evidence from this discussion thread that most users are getting used to tags and liking them (though I'm sure that many do...perhaps people,with small numbers of folders and files...teenagers or students).

Most likely, users like me are not using tags and suffering these ....because we have gone back to Mountain Lion!

Seriously, after many years of using colour labels with many thousands of files and folders there is no way I will break my workflow for these useless and ineffective tags.

so...in my humble opinion, tags are still a deeply flawed offer from Apple who broke a perfectly good and usable function. The new tags are still effectively unusable and unreadable......just useless rubbish.

I really can't believe that tags made it out the door in present form. Did nobody at Apple actually test this....or use it with more than four or five files? What a joke!

And I can't believe that apple killed coloured labels in delivering these useless tags.

It used to be the case that Apple prided themselves on the perfect blend of form and function, and innovation. How wrong they got it this time....and still no fix in the minor updates to date.

Aaaaaaaargh!!!!!! I hate tags and mavericks so far!!!

So....I hate these tags which suck and are useless for managing large numbers of folders and files in the enterprise.

I hope Apple bring back coloured labels. Then I might upgrade from MT.....but for now, I'm staying with MT with all my Apple boxes.

brian.nolan wrote:

I hope Apple bring back coloured labels. Then I might upgrade from MT.....but for now, I'm staying with MT with all my Apple boxes.

Interesting approach. What is MT?

Thanks

Pete

Well, if you read my last post you'll understand that Apple has actually implemented Tags in the best way they could, when you consider that having multiple Tags is really the functionality they were after. It is a bit annoying that they're so visually understated, and so far off to the right of the folder. But if you think about it, they put the dot in the only place they could, really. If it was to the left of the file/folder name, then multiple Tags would mess up the justification of the names. If it was immediately to the right of the name, it would look pretty brutal, since all the dots would appear in different vertical colums.

By adding more sort descriptors you can move the Tag closer to the name, and it then functions pretty much like the Labels used to. Also, being able to sort by Tags is pretty slick (that's what I'm doing now). In actual fact, Tags are clearly more powerful than Labels. They're just a bit less visually obvious and take a bit of adapting to get used to.

But other than the minor Tags growing pains I'm really impressed with Mavericks, so far. I've noticed many nice little features, and some pretty clear performance improvements, too.

So, all round, I'm impressed.

Mt is a typo...it should be ML.

....Otherwise known as Mountain Lion 

brian.nolan wrote:

 

Mt is a typo...it should be ML.

 

....Otherwise known as Mountain Lion 

Oh. ML, not MT. I see. Then stay back there. No one is forcing you to upgrade. I love Tags now. Just took a little getting used to. I used a dial up telephone for thirty years and hey, look at me now! I can use a smart phone!

Cheers

pete

Good for your opinion Pete, but others respectfully disagree. Glad you like the little "Dots" called tags, not having the option to use or not use is what most users want.  This is not resistance to change as the tags do not perform as the labels did. Mavericks is a great change, but removing the option to use labels is not.  Change that is an improvement and better is great, but tags alone, does not fit in that catagory in my humble opinon.  Anyone can get used to anything, it doee not mean we like it or don't want to improve on it.

I'm pleased you like tags. But, they are useless for me. I have absolutely no need for them at all. Additionally, they arrived at the expense of removing coloured labels. It would have been much better to have coloured labels AND tags. then I could chose to NOT use tags but to continue to use coloured labels.

Why are tags no use to me? Well, I work with about 20,00+0 files and a hundreds  of folders categorized by file type and function, and present work status, over the years....and I use coloured labels to denote the status at folder level...and, within a folder, at individual file level....but colour coded differently to those at folder level.

My solution....go back to Mountain Lion and coloured labels that work for me.....and many many other people it seems.

Apple, in my view, just got this very very badly wrong by not testing tags for high volume file numbers and not realising the negative impact of the lack of visual function in the realisation of tags.

And....in doing this they broke coloured labels functionality completely.

This is really bad for me....I have fully gone back to Mountain Lion where I have the functionality that works for me.

cfe wrote:

 

Good for your opinion Pete, but others respectfully disagree. Glad you like the little "Dots" called tags, not having the option to use or not use is what most users want.  This is not resistance to change as the tags do not perform as the labels did. Mavericks is a great change, but removing the option to use labels is not.  Change that is an improvement and better is great, but tags alone, does not fit in that catagory in my humble opinon.  Anyone can get used to anything, it doee not mean we like it or don't want to improve on it.

And yet I found the colored folders far too narrowly focused, I want more flexibility in my identification system. Tags does exactly what I require without making my Mac look like a fairground. Far more flexibility, far less cartoonlike.

I am glad the colored folders are gone.

So I'll respectfully disagree.

brian.nolan wrote:

 

 

And....in doing this they broke coloured labels functionality completely.

It was not 'broken'

It was removed, big difference.

I agree...no one is forcing me to upgrade....I did but reverted to a more stable and functional OSX, Mountain Lion.

I'm really not so interested in whether you can use a button phone or a smart phone...or a bush telegraph...that is way off topic, as I am sure you know.

Have all the fun you want with Tags....it is clear to me and many others don't like them at all...for reasons well stated in the various tread responses over the months.

It used to be the case that Apple were excellent at marrying usability and function...not so with this OSX release, unfortunately

I think that some people (like me) are just more visual organizers, and the colored folders really helped to quickly visually identify/organize things. For us, this change to colored tags is a huge loss. I see that other folks are not as compromised by the change to colored tags -- and that they can work with the concept of searching/sorting based on a file's color-tag -- and that's fine too.

I don't think we need to continue to explain to each other why the colors were important -- or conversely how the tags are workable. People just have different sensibilities, and for me -- although I understand the specific claimed usefulness of color-tags, that doesn't in any way change how I feel about the absence of the old-school coloring.

I think there's a lot of going around in circles here, trying to unsuccessfully convince each other that our position is valid -- when really, those who are unhappy with the change should just write Apple and let them know (I did), and those who are fine with the new system should just feel grateful that the upgrade wasn't a loss for them.

Unfortunately, the commonality between broken and removed is that I can't use them....and I want to use colour labels, not tags

Tags suck at the functionality achieved so elegantly by coloured labels at folder and file level.

..........Big mistake here with this Apple!!

Sorry, but I disagree. The "functionality" of labels is not gone with Tags; they're just less visually obvious. At first I also had a problem with this, but once I adapted my workflow (very slightly, I might add), I realized that Tags are much more powerful. As I recall, Labels couldn't actually provide any kind of organizational advantage, except for that provided by the visual/colour signal. That has been made less noticeable, but it hasn't actually been removed. So getting all upset and claiming that Apple "broke" the Label functionality is just incorrect.

It's find that you've reverted to ML, but imho you've done yourself an injustice. With a little adaptation Tags can be far more effective than Labels, since they can actually provide organizational "functionality," not just visual feedback. As I said, I was a bit shocked initially, as well. But with virtually no cognitive effort I've adapted.

If someone can explain to me how Apple could have Labels offer the functionality of multiple classifications, then I'm all ears. I can't see any simple and clean solution (other than Tags, that is).