Apple really got the intuition that files and folders aren't the "natural" way to organize things for most people.
For Office-style documents, there's no better way (except for search and recents), because everybody has different needs and deals with very different kinds of documents. For things that are more standardized, like music or photos, people want to think in terms of artists, albums and playlists, not in terms of some meticulously-maintained folder hierarchy.
Folders have some nifty properties, like good deletion handling, permissions management and intuitive movement from and to different drives, but they don't outweigh the advantage of specialized entities for most people.
For Office-style documents, there's no better way (except for search and recents), because everybody has different needs and deals with very different kinds of documents. For things that are more standardized, like music or photos, people want to think in terms of artists, albums and playlists, not in terms of some meticulously-maintained folder hierarchy.
Folders have some nifty properties, like good deletion handling, permissions management and intuitive movement from and to different drives, but they don't outweigh the advantage of specialized entities for most people.