1. It preserves the metaphor of your desktop being a place where you can directly manipulate your files and folders. On early Mac versions, the Finder "was" your files, it wasn't just "a browser for" your files. That metaphorical consistency is very important for building a good UI, but products these days have gotten so complex that most of them lose it.
2. It prevents you from getting into a situation where you've opened up a bunch of Finder windows, navigated through them, and then find that they're all pointing at your home directory again. Ironically, the reason Steve Jobs gave for the new MacOS X finder was that the old one popped open a bunch of windows that you'd have to manually "garbage collect", but I feel like I'm garbage-collecting a lot more on MacOS X than on System 7. The reason is because on System 7, the Finder window I had open was a natural extension of my current task and I just closed it when I was done with the task, while in MacOS X, I just usually have one or two windows open and then periodically feel like they're a distraction that's getting in my way.
Another benefit of the mapping is that the window's properties such as height, width, display style (list or grid) remained the same even after closing, they are properties of the directory, not of a specific file browser instance.
But that requires opening each subfolder in its own window, right? I can say ever since Win95 I've been setting that stupid Folder Options > 'Open each folder in the same window' setting because I could never stand having the next level down appear someone random on the screen and just clutter up the entire desktop.
Usually, I'd navigate to a folder and then have the content in list view (which was really useful, like windows' "detailed" view, only better) and then drill down to the subfolders via the collapsible tree.
So, yeah I miss the spatial finder too, but after 10+ years, I have gotten over it. People blow this out of proportion.
They're both the real file. The file does exist only once. Are you saying in the spatial Finder you can't have duplicate views of a particular directory open?
Or are you referring to the files themselves? So if you open up somephoto.jpg in Preview, you couldn't open it up a second time?
The behavior you're describing is the behavior of a browser. The parent post was talking about maintaining the desktop metaphor; my actual desk has one drawer with pens and sticky notes in it. I can't open another drawer that also has the exact same pens and sticky notes in it.
I'm not necessarily siding with the parent post, but I think the point was fairly clear.
Now I've seen the video below, I understand the point. It's been a long, long time since I used earlier versions of MacOS and I was never a regular Mac user back then. I'm not sure if that was a better or less convenient method of browsing files. I can see the benefits of both Finders to be honest.
Couple reasons:
1. It preserves the metaphor of your desktop being a place where you can directly manipulate your files and folders. On early Mac versions, the Finder "was" your files, it wasn't just "a browser for" your files. That metaphorical consistency is very important for building a good UI, but products these days have gotten so complex that most of them lose it.
2. It prevents you from getting into a situation where you've opened up a bunch of Finder windows, navigated through them, and then find that they're all pointing at your home directory again. Ironically, the reason Steve Jobs gave for the new MacOS X finder was that the old one popped open a bunch of windows that you'd have to manually "garbage collect", but I feel like I'm garbage-collecting a lot more on MacOS X than on System 7. The reason is because on System 7, the Finder window I had open was a natural extension of my current task and I just closed it when I was done with the task, while in MacOS X, I just usually have one or two windows open and then periodically feel like they're a distraction that's getting in my way.