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Comment by FerretFred | Hacker News Reader

Files! I bought an iPad Mini 2019 and loved it - it replaced my iPad 2 which was no longer getting updates and that still works fine as a music player.

But FILES! Gah! What a MESS. With 13.1.x it improved, but I still manage to lose files that I mail to myself from the PC. They go to "My iPad" apparently, but not always. I wanted to use MiniKeepass with a password and a keyfile, but despite following the dev's instructions and some experimentation I just could not get it to find the key file. So it's deleted for now. I hope they fix it soon..

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Beware: don't share dot files with the Files app. I tried to sync a git directory and now my Files app is filled with several hundred git object files (bf13ee59588b878f1d780c5cc8cd2e3410eaba, etc) that cannot be selected, moved, or deleted because they allegedly "do not exist" according to the error dialog.

That sucks. Do you know of any way to fix it, other than backing up the data in each app separately using means other than iTunes/iCloud backup, and then restoring the iPad to factory state, which would take hours?

What did you use to sync? I've been able to sync Git repositories in GoodReader and Working Copy, but I have found the Files app's SMB support, and integration with apps like Secure Shellfish, to be buggy and unreliable.

The device needs a factory reset. Deleting the Files app itself does nothing, even though this warns you that all associated data will be deleted. Which is unsurprising at this point. The latest OS updates feel like I'm a beta tester for Windows ME.

I got super excited about the USB drive support and started telling everyone who would listen about how it would solve all our work-related problems with transferring gigabytes of documents onto iPads securely. Then I tried using it with about 10 different USB devices, and was unable to use any of them to successfully copy a 10 GB folder with thousands of files in it into 'On My iPad.' Working with one file at a time was OK, but I managed to get Files into an unresponsive state that could only be cured with a reboot more than once by accessing and copying large folders. I’m convinced nobody at Apple actually tried to use iOS's USB support for “Pro” tasks – it doesn't work.

A "Pro" user to most companies is someone who can send / receive emails, and create / edit / share documents, plus google things they don't know.

A "regular" user is one who uses their device primarily for consumption; facebook, netflix and music.

The missing tier is "creators", developers / designers etc - and they find themselves lumped in with "pro" users yet their requirements are just a little bit higher. The market for "creators" is marginal, so it'll never be a focus.

For full control, there's "enterprise" versions of most software but come at a huge cost. This is where some "creators" find themselves as well when "pro" doesn't quite cut it, but generally find "enterprise" is overkill.

My "pro" use case is to allow people to read a bookshelf worth of paper without having to lug around the bookshelf or download it over a slow internet connection. It is a consumption use case! But since what is being consumed is a bunch of PDFs in a folder, rather than the output of a proprietary app for accessing a subscription service, this has always required ... a proprietary app for accessing a subscription service like Dropbox, or at least a self-hosted version of it using SMB/SFTP.

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