Of course, it's easy to point to the worst offenders against each of these principles. In the language of patterns, a solution balances forces in a context to produce a resulting context. If you change the initial context or the forces at work, the solution must change, too. By balancing these forces in the context of human psychology, desktops have evolved several attributes that aid usability. The human mind excels at finding things again.
Spatial recall helps a person find something by providing the general location.
Once in the vicinity, that person can find the target for fine location. This works for hunters returning to camp as well as users repeating an action. You can see this by watching someone move their mouse before their eyes move to the target region. The less a target control moves around the screen, the stronger this effect is. Of course, spatial recall applies best when spatial navigation means something.