If you’ve been using a Mac for a while, you probably know about smart folders, which are essentially saved searches. I’ve known about them for a long time, but for some reason never used them much. I’ve started to realize this was a huge mistake.

Smart folders can be very specific and complicated, but even a simple one that looks for all PDFs across the file system is an incredible time saver. Being able to see recently modified PDFs from different applications in a common “folder” so that I can combine them and use them in different ways is way easier than doing PDF-specific searches or having a bunch of Finder windows open at once.

The core feature of the Mac that’s yet to be replicated by iOS is the file system. The ability to have files scattered across a file system that any installed app can access is a taken-for-granted aspect of computing that I hope we never lose. For now, we haven’t, and I plan to use the hell out of it.