What are the advantages and disadvantages of Apply to Enclosed Items?

Solution 1:

The risk, honestly, is that if you make a mistake you percolate that mistake through that entire section of the file system. That can be tremendously time-consuming and headache-inducing to undo, assuming it can be undone at all. It isn't necessarily bad to use the Finder, you just need to be aware that the Finder's interface for permissions and ACLs is simplified for non-technical users. It doesn't give as much control as one would get in a terminal session or shell script, and makes some assumptions about what the user wants that are probably generally true, but not spelled out in detail.

It's best to think of a file system as the proverbial china shop. The more things you try to work with at once, the more havoc you will wreak if you slip up.