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Comment by Macha | Hacker News Reader

I dislike the way it discourages data portability.

e.g.

* I want to be able to have syncthing pull down my keepass database and have keepass2android open the current version in launch without having to navigate a file picker every time.

* I want to use my browser to download rpg rulebooks from drivethrurpg then open them in my PDF viewer without either of those two having to specifically integrate with each other. It would then be nice if that pdf reader could display a list of recent files on launch rather than reopen a picker.

They're mostly my gripes with Android 10's lockdown but iOS doesn't even want the filesystem exposed. I won't deny there's security advantages to this model, but it should have an out as it just encourages your app to own your data and only use it in ways they foresaw rather than giving control to users.

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Unless I'm missing something obvious, all of the functionality you described is totally doable in iOS today using shared Documents folders. None of the apps need to know about each other for it to work.

I like that each app has its own filesystem, but i do wish i could 'get at' anything from the Files app. I want to plug in my iPhone and see the filesystem for the Files app. I want to be able to "share" any file from any app into Files. This would either be "Save to Files" or simply exposing it to files.

I wish Apple made this easy, and just stopped doing whatever they're doing with iTunes. I hate needing it to upload photos.

> I like that each app has its own filesystem, but i do wish i could 'get at' anything from the Files app.

If the developer takes the time to set it up, this is exactly how the Files app works -- each app will appear either as a folder or as a provider.

> I want to plug in my iPhone and see the filesystem for the Files app.

This is how it works currently on macOS; word is that this will be coming to Windows once they finish splitting up that version of iTunes.

> I want to be able to "share" any file from any app into Files. This would either be "Save to Files" or simply exposing it to files.

Again, this is up to the app developer to implement. On apps that support it, there's literally a "Save to Files" option on the share sheet.

The thing is that the developer has the choice to implement it or not.

On the other hand, Microsoft didn't get a say about LibreOffice being able to read it's files.

I use a password manager app on IOS and MacOS. It stores the pw file in a Dropbox folder and is synced between the devices. If never had to manually open files or copy file between them. I might be able to use iClouds shared files, too, but I started using Dropbox for the syncing years ago and am not ready to switch that,yet.

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