Changing the sorting in the Icon view

Question

This has been giving me a headache since I upgraded to Lion since it was released. I deal with very large numbers of files of various types and since OS X first was released it was easy for you to sort items in a folder by type however with Lion Apple dropped the ball on this. In the Icon View it is foolish not to have the folders listed first in the sort or arrange order. If you have folders that have folders in them to help separate large projects it used to be simple to navigate but now Apple has made this simple navigation task a total pain. Since you have to scroll down to get to the sub folder and heaven help you if you have to do this several times. There is no good reason not to allow the user to change the sort order. A simple search shows I am not alone in this and Apple has yet to respond this problem.
We are up to version .3 on lion and this still is a nightmare. I understand and agree with the strategy to make iOS and OS X to be similar for the novice user but to do so by sacrificing the functionality of OS X is well stupid. If I wanted an iPad I would have bought one  not a Mac Pro and a MacBook Pro to work on. You cant run the programs I use a super sized iPhone. Till you can please don’t cripple OS X. It can't be a huge task to allow the user in the icon view to chose ascending or descending order and lock that choice in. Also have it automatically adjust the arrangement if you resize the window so you dont have to scroll side ways only up or down.
Finder worked like this since I switched to Mac's back in 2002. I have been very happy with OS X and Apple till this change. This is not a small issue for me. I have counting external and internal drives totaling 14 TB's of storage and add about 1 TB a month with the projects I now have. I hope this gets fixed soon it has me worried that Apple is solely catering to the iPad and iPhone users. I didn't spend nearly 10K$ for a new workstation and laptop to have it function like an iPad.
For the record I do like the iPad but you can't run Photoshop, MS Office, Poser or CAD programs on an iPad and if you could it would take it weeks to do some of the tasks that a dual quad core can do in minutes.
There are ways to bring back many functions that were changed in Lion such as hiding the scroll bar or reversing the scrolling direction why not retain the sort options that your customers have been using for years? This small change reduces productivity and thus reducing my profit margins and not to mention increasing aggravation.

Answer 1

I actually didn't read your whole dissertation, but if you want to know about sorting in the Finder, then this is how it works:
There are two modes of organizing the layout of the items in the Finder. There is an Arrangement which is grouping similar characteristics together. Then, there is sorting which sorts the items by some criteria, like name, date, etc.
The Arrangement and Sorting functions are both in the same menu item or button on the toolbar. Arrangement is primary, and Sorting is secondary. You can get to the Sorting options by holding down the option key and clicking on the button or menu option.
You can have both an Arrangement and a Sort, depending on the Arrangement chosen.  Arranging by Name or Date doesn't offer any other sorting options. Arranging by Kind, or Application, or Label will allow you to sort each group by some criteria chosen from the Sort options.
If you Arrange by None, you can sort by any of the other criteria.
I have run into a bug where you can choose the sort order once arranged. You can usually reverse the sort order by going into List View, arrange by None, and set the sort direction in the column headers.