in Vista the option "apply to all folders" applies your selection to the currently selcted folder type. Vista uses 5 different types of folders where you can select different views and Vista displays that different views depending on which files you have store inside the currently opened folder. If you have documents, you are interested in the author, title, key words and for videos/musik you are interested in the bitrate, author. So Vista allows you to set different views for different kind of files inside your folders.