This should be cleary fixed by Apple not bloody *censored*ing it up in the first place.

Apple didn't screw anything up, they changed which workflow is favored:

1. Programmer. Lots-of-generic-files and lots-of-specific-apps-that-all-edit-generic-files. Like .txt or .html files and BBEdit, Smultron, vim, etc, etc, etc. This was the favored workflow.

2. Projects. You use programs that have sophisticated project files (Photoshop's PSD, Final Cut Pro, Logic, etc) where the output is generic and generally not directly edited (say JPEG from PSD, Quicktime file from FCP, AIFF from Logic, PDFs from Pages, etc). You want to view generic files, not edit them.

I, and I think most Mac users, tend to use workflow #2, and it's a royal pain when you double-click on a QT file and launch the world's slowest and least-featured previewer, Final Cut Pro, rather than a fast, full-featured (for manipulating QT files and their contents) Quicktime Player Pro.

And let's be honest, the previous way wasn't useful for workflow #1 if you used different programs on the SAME file at various times. It had to be that you edited certain .html files in one program, and other .html files in another, or specific PDFs in one program and different PDFs in another.

So if you worked in a specific subset of workflow #1, the previous way worked for you. Otherwise, it either did not help you much, or it actually made you go out of your way. So I think the 10.6 way of doing things is a benefit to most users, while a loss to specific kinds of technical, programmer-like jobs.