Well, your examples are kinda covered in iOS already: the note goes in Notes, the address goes in the Address Book, and the list goes in Reminders. But I think I see what you mean -- where do you throw random bits of stuff and how do you get it back?
I think in the sort of usage you're describing, you just make random things and save them, and you get them back with search and a chronological list. The three things you describe don't sound like you'll need them after, say, tomorrow afternoon. So why put a ton of effort into organizing them?
It is of course useful to be able to organize arbitrary files in a more permanent way. The repeated mistake (to me) is that the process of organization is not itself considered a concrete application based on specific use cases. For some reason, a document format is considered application-specific, but as soon as you want to group two documents together you're dropped into this pure universal abstraction of a filesystem hierarchy. In other words, applications get to define how files work, but not how folders work.
For example, you could have a "project" that let you group various things together (maybe some CAD drawings of an office remodel along with various random notes and a budget spreadsheet). That's what a folder does, but a project would be much more specific--maybe do some time tracking, have some client-based organizational functions, etc. And of course you'd look at projects in the project application, not in a filesystem debugger.
I think in the sort of usage you're describing, you just make random things and save them, and you get them back with search and a chronological list. The three things you describe don't sound like you'll need them after, say, tomorrow afternoon. So why put a ton of effort into organizing them?
It is of course useful to be able to organize arbitrary files in a more permanent way. The repeated mistake (to me) is that the process of organization is not itself considered a concrete application based on specific use cases. For some reason, a document format is considered application-specific, but as soon as you want to group two documents together you're dropped into this pure universal abstraction of a filesystem hierarchy. In other words, applications get to define how files work, but not how folders work.
For example, you could have a "project" that let you group various things together (maybe some CAD drawings of an office remodel along with various random notes and a budget spreadsheet). That's what a folder does, but a project would be much more specific--maybe do some time tracking, have some client-based organizational functions, etc. And of course you'd look at projects in the project application, not in a filesystem debugger.