On File Management in iOS
The iPad may not need a visible, all-dictating file system as we know it, but it damn well needs a filing system. This “post-PC device” depends on a PC, or on nasty workarounds like emailing or cloud services, to do what it’s supposedly replacing. (Unless literally all you do is read mail and browse. I’m pretty sure most of those people would like to write a document and file it away every once in a while too.) I get that this might be a lot to solve without repeating the failures of past systems, but it’s badly needed. If this isn’t addressed in iOS 5, one wonders what the priorities are in Cupertino.
[...] The iPhone is ultimately “still just a phone”. Most of the things it can do, like act as a bubble level or flute, is pure gravy; if your business didn’t buy it for you, you probably carry it to be reached and to mess around in Cut The Rope once in a while. The iPad is positioned directly as something that mostly replaces a laptop and is more powerful than the iPhone. The iPad is simply where the justified criticisms in the same iOS because of positioning really turn inconvenient.
“What do you mean I can’t organize my documents in a uniform way? I might not like exactly how computers work, but that’s what they do for me. It’s why I use them.”
Screw the debate about Flash, 7″ screens or device heft. The best thing Apple can do to take it beyond today’s PC is to bring it closer to today’s PC. They already have the innovative parts. The successor to flawed organization isn’tno organization. It’s time to salvage from PCs what still works so well.
As i wrote a while back: pretending this problem doesn’t exist won’t cut it. Revisiting how the Newton did it might be a good place to start.
On File Management in OS X
Lukas Mathis’ Mac OS X Lion commentary is among the best i’ve read and covers pretty much all the bases, but one point in particular stuck out to me:
By now, it seems obvious that Apple isn’t interested in rethinking the Finder. Instead, the goal seems to be to de-emphasize it. Thus, Launchpad, a home screen for the Mac. I suspect that Apple wants people to use Launchpad as their default way of accessing their Macs, rather than the Finder. I further suspect that Apple would like it if applications took over management of their own files, similar to how iPad apps do this.
Which strikes me as a somewhat terrible thing to do. Don’t get me wrong, the Launchpad seems like a good idea and a useful addition to the Dock, but just because Apple decided to completely ignore the daunting challenge of rethinking file management in iOS doesn’t mean this problem is solved. Look no further than the horrendous state of file management in Apple’s own iWork apps for iPad for proof that what we now have in iOS is by no means adequate or satisfactory. File management is one of the cornerstones of creating your own inter-application workflows in personal computing, and defining somewhat efficient workflows is an area where the iPad is still lacking. I’d say the dire limitations on moving data from one application to another is what’s holding the iPad back as a proper work machine. I’d be happy with any solution that solves this problem without resorting to the traditional files & folders model, but just pretending this problem doesn’t exist won’t cut it.
