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iPad The Future of the iPad Does Not Include A Traditional Filesystem
- Thread starter jeremiah256
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I've long wanted one and continue to hope for one.
The idea that every app's files are sandboxed means then that I cannot set a default app globally for say...movies.
that way, I could just upload/copy all movies to a master folder and have one (or more movie apps) play whatever I want.
I suggest Apple keep the iPad sandboxed the way it is but allow someone to hook up a USB drive and have it accessible to any App and not just the Photos app. Huge 4K videos are something I don't want to put in a cloud drive for performance reasons mostly.
Cloud. A current trend with a hybrid model a far better option. Also something that Apple still hasn't gotten right.
- When it comes to security, a cloud is the last place to store sensitive files unless you, and only you are in charge of the encryption keys.
- When it comes to real work, I store locally and backup elsewhere.
- A "traditional" file system is one of my top 3 used features on a computer.
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People lament not having access to a true file system because what we have is clunky and missing too many things. Depending on how you use your device, this may or may not be a big deal to you. Right now, it's far too limiting for me to consider ever replacing a laptop with a tablet (that along with the lack of mouse support ).
That seriously holds true if you travel internationally.
Not just international. Two recent trips: a week-long trip to Alaska and had zero WiFi or cell connectivity for the majority of the time(and no, I wasn't camped out somewhere in the woods; a week-long trip through northeastern Washington, northern Idaho and southern British Columbia, again long stretches of no connectivity or when available, poor signal and low bandwidth. There are vast areas of the US where the Internet is not reachable or if it is, it is over very sketchy connections. And next month, I'll be out on a boat for 3 weeks ...
Agreed. I rarely use my laptop at home anymore but it's always with me on trips longer than 2 days primarily as a data repository (internal: 256GB M.2 + 2TB 2.5" SATA III; external: 4TB 2.5" USB3).
I've been trying to leave my laptop at home and using a wireless filehub with a 2TB USB HDD attached to it as a data repository for my Air 2. My two biggest uses are streaming mp4 movies from the HDD and backing up my camera RAW photo & video files from the camera's SD card to the HDD (and then reviewing them from the HDD).
I have Plex Media Server installed on the laptop (I like having a Netflix-like interface and it's a must for my mom) so current wireless filehubs don't work well for me. Besides, the laptop contains a complete copy of my Dropbox folder as well as being quite useful when I need to go to websites that require ActiveX or Flash.
Been thinking of building a battery-powered Raspberry Pi Plex Server for a while. I just haven't found the time to devote to the project.
I do not think that iPad needs a proper filesystem per se, but there are many simple things that I do with Finder on OS X that are a complete convoluted mess to do on an iPad.
I'm not talking about advanced tech tasks either. This is a common example -
Say someone emails me a link to a zip which contains a PowerPoint presentation and a PDF of that presentation, I need to edit this PowerPoint presentation and update the PDFed version, zip it up again, upload it to the server, and email off the link to someone else.
Currently on iPad:
The iPad could be a laptop replacement and an iPad can do everything a laptop can. The major caveat is that most things are more convoluted and take more time on an iPad. For this reason, I don't think the iPad vision is the right way forward.
I'm not talking about advanced tech tasks either. This is a common example -
Say someone emails me a link to a zip which contains a PowerPoint presentation and a PDF of that presentation, I need to edit this PowerPoint presentation and update the PDFed version, zip it up again, upload it to the server, and email off the link to someone else.
Currently on iPad:
- I get the link in Mail.app, open the link in Safari.app to download the .zip, which triggers Documents.app.
- From there, I can "share" the .pptx to PowerPoint.app, and make edits.
- Except now it's a bit confusing where I have two copies of the .pptx file - the updated one in PowerPoint.app and the original in Documents.app.
- I save the new .pptx with my edits and I "share" it to PDFReader5.app to convert to a PDF.
- More confusing now, I have 3 copies of the .pptx file (original in Documents.app, edited in PowerPoint.app, and copy of edited in PDFReader5.app) and 2 copies of the .pdf (original in Documents.app, new in PDFReader5.app).
- Now I need to be careful to "share" the right .pptx and .pdf to Zip.app to create a new .zip.
- I then need to share the new .zip to Dropbox.app to upload to and generate a link to copy and paste into an email.
- In the end, the .pptx file exists in 6 copies throughout my iOS device (original in Documents.app; edited version in PowerPoint.app, PDFReader5.app, and Zip.app; and in an zip in Zip.app and Dropbox.app).
- This is pretty chaotic, and it's a simple example. Imagine the craziness if I realized I made a typo while zipping it, and went back to fix the typo. I'd have something like 9 or 10 copies existing over 3 or 4 apps!
- Just thinking of this makes my head hurt.
The iPad could be a laptop replacement and an iPad can do everything a laptop can. The major caveat is that most things are more convoluted and take more time on an iPad. For this reason, I don't think the iPad vision is the right way forward.
Isnt having a iCloud drive app already a step in the file management direction (ableit a very small one but it still goes against the original Apple vision)
Apple have said a lot of things in the past but have simply changed their mind - Phablets / Stylus / big iPads and now even smart keyboards
I dont think we will see a Mac OSX style finder but I think things will evolve to make things more user friendly otherwise this "Pro" moniker is half cocked
Apple have said a lot of things in the past but have simply changed their mind - Phablets / Stylus / big iPads and now even smart keyboards
I dont think we will see a Mac OSX style finder but I think things will evolve to make things more user friendly otherwise this "Pro" moniker is half cocked
Yes, that is an issue where trying to "share" a file across different apps just leaves many copies of it lying around individual app sandboxes.
He really had a presence ... Who in the tech world now is that charismatic and engaging? His technical knowledge was deep, combined with his intellect and energy, a powerful combination.
This says it all really. Total mess and very un Apple, need some solution badly
Apple have kind of partially given in and given us a iCloud Drive App (this was supposed to be invisible to the user / not part of the experience if I remember the Apple Mantra rightly) however its kind of like a file system except locked to iCloud. As mentioned above something like this but more flexible could be the ideal solution
In an ideal world this App would be the basic file system but we could choose which cloud service for syncing / and / or keep on local device, zip service and add / rename folders / engage with USB storage etc
e.g. In your example - download zip file would save in the App and then you can play with it from there, unzip and open in any app, edit, save back and rezip.
Maybe this is the way forward since Apple have given us some basic file structure with the iCloud drive.
Somethings got to give especially now with the "pro" line, the Apple iCloud Drive app in my opinion kind of shows Apple have backtracked a little on this, so hopefully something will come. I dont think we need full on file system but something a bit like Document5 / Dropbox etc have been doing etc but part of the IOS system for all apps to dip into
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I agree with the apps & Dropbox route. Though I wish Pages had the integration with Dropbox that Word does, I'll be fine using Word until that happens (or if it happens) and be fine with a cloud only file system. If I know that I will be without connectivity for a while (e.g. on a plane) I simply download files that I need to work on. It works for me, though I realize that my case is not everyone's of course.
The problem with that is that say my kid accidentally deletes an app with important files...let me just restore it from backup. Oh wait, I have to restore my entire iPad just to get those files. Is this a good thing in your eyes? Apple could add a single app restore functionality, but it just straight does not exist right now.
Auto-organizing data is a also a wonderful idea, but it is not the reality in iOS. Having app specific data is not the end all solution because one app is not good for everything. Look at something that Apple wants iOS users to do - edit video. A pro workflow consists of import/tagging, color correction, editing, vfx, and export. That typically has multiple apps for each stage, because there is no one app that does everything. In iOS as it stands right now you will be creating multiple copies of multiple gigabyte files to do that. And then worse, is that you open this single use apps in the middle of the chain and you see those partially completed clips that still exist because you have to manually delete them after you copied them back into the main editor. Essentially - a painful experience. And that doesn't even get to the fact that you need to access external high speed storage because the wedding video you just shot has 80GB of data to sift through.
The problem is that you think that people want Apple to just shoehorn on the same old file system we have had for years on Mac. That is not the case - what I am asking for is Apple to add the file system of the future - with things like versioning and tags. You have excel installed and see your documents, but then you install Numbers...and you see all of those same documents. You delete an app and you don't lose the data, unless you want to.
I use Documents app and you can access files from there as well. Multiple files, just press and hold again to add another file.
Actually, Apple makes money by selling you hardware, the cloud services is there to entice people to buy their hardware. Google makes money by mining their user info and selling this info. It's not like I think Apple is fundamentally less evil than Google, but they have no need to mine your info to make money.
Have you ever run an uninstall program on Windows? It takes a lot longer than dragging your app to trash.
@jclardy:
"The problem with that is that say my kid accidentally deletes an app with important files...let me just restore it from backup. Oh wait, I have to restore my entire iPad just to get those files. Is this a good thing in your eyes? Apple could add a single app restore functionality, but it just straight does not exist right now."
I'm not understanding your use case. My assumption (yes, as @joeblow7777 has stated, I don't have any insider information) is that with an iOS device, the default model is using the cloud. Deleting the app does not delete the data, they are separate objects.
"Auto-organizing data is a also a wonderful idea, but it is not the reality in iOS. Having app specific data is not the end all solution because one app is not good for everything.
The problem is that you think that people want Apple to just shoehorn on the same old file system we have had for years on Mac. That is not the case - what I am asking for is Apple to add the file system of the future - with things like versioning and tags. You have excel installed and see your documents, but then you install Numbers...and you see all of those same documents. You delete an app and you don't lose the data, unless you want to."
Agree. But Apple is not getting rid of Mac OS X and they are not finished designing iOS. They have been working on securely providing a means for apps to communicate and share. Which is why I'm very excited to see what iOS 10 brings.
@joeblow7777:
Understand you were using an example. Apologize if my tone said otherwise. The discussions on this thread are very helpful to me in clarifying my thoughts on this issue.
I brought Steve into the equation because I believe this has been a passion that he brought to Apple when he returned 20 years ago and turned the ship around. I believe that those at Apple other than Steve Jobs also believe this and are fully committed to the iOS model.
You're right, these are just my musings, but I'm drawing my conclusions from the numbers. Of Mac OS X and iOS, which is Apple's main operating system? Of devices sold, which are the most profitable for the company? At this point in time, Apple's main OS does not have a traditional file system.
Apple has done this switch-a-roo before. Apple replaced their old classic operating system, in 2001 with Mac OS X, because the company Apple bought from Steve Jobs, Next, had created and used a Unix-based operating system. And again, I'm not saying Mac OS X is going away. I'm saying they will keep their models separate and distinct, something they can do by leveraging the cloud, which enables networking and communication between your devices.
"The problem with that is that say my kid accidentally deletes an app with important files...let me just restore it from backup. Oh wait, I have to restore my entire iPad just to get those files. Is this a good thing in your eyes? Apple could add a single app restore functionality, but it just straight does not exist right now."
I'm not understanding your use case. My assumption (yes, as @joeblow7777 has stated, I don't have any insider information) is that with an iOS device, the default model is using the cloud. Deleting the app does not delete the data, they are separate objects.
"Auto-organizing data is a also a wonderful idea, but it is not the reality in iOS. Having app specific data is not the end all solution because one app is not good for everything.
The problem is that you think that people want Apple to just shoehorn on the same old file system we have had for years on Mac. That is not the case - what I am asking for is Apple to add the file system of the future - with things like versioning and tags. You have excel installed and see your documents, but then you install Numbers...and you see all of those same documents. You delete an app and you don't lose the data, unless you want to."
Agree. But Apple is not getting rid of Mac OS X and they are not finished designing iOS. They have been working on securely providing a means for apps to communicate and share. Which is why I'm very excited to see what iOS 10 brings.
@joeblow7777:
Understand you were using an example. Apologize if my tone said otherwise. The discussions on this thread are very helpful to me in clarifying my thoughts on this issue.
I brought Steve into the equation because I believe this has been a passion that he brought to Apple when he returned 20 years ago and turned the ship around. I believe that those at Apple other than Steve Jobs also believe this and are fully committed to the iOS model.
You're right, these are just my musings, but I'm drawing my conclusions from the numbers. Of Mac OS X and iOS, which is Apple's main operating system? Of devices sold, which are the most profitable for the company? At this point in time, Apple's main OS does not have a traditional file system.
Apple has done this switch-a-roo before. Apple replaced their old classic operating system, in 2001 with Mac OS X, because the company Apple bought from Steve Jobs, Next, had created and used a Unix-based operating system. And again, I'm not saying Mac OS X is going away. I'm saying they will keep their models separate and distinct, something they can do by leveraging the cloud, which enables networking and communication between your devices.
Deleting the app does delete the data stored inside the app. Sometimes, if you reinstall an app immediately after deleting it, you get back the data because it hasn't been overwritten yet. And many apps now store their data in the cloud, so they sync back the data on reinstallation. But basically, if you delete an app and there's no cloud syncing, then it is bye-bye data!
I agree completely. As it stands right now, iOS makes some complex things easier, but at the expense of making many simple things more complex. This is not a trade-off I am ready to accept, at least not on a productivity device.
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The fact this is unpredictable is part of the problem. One app for annotating PDFs may work from another app for annotating PDFs. On iOS, this is at the whim of the developer. On OS X, the user's files are always preserved. Also, cloud syncing is not ideal when dealing with files measured in GB.
The uninstaller is also a lot more effective though. Apples method tends to leave piles of stuff sitting in Application Support/ frequently to the tune of GBs of needless cruft if you have used a lot of apps.