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Comment by mimi89999 | Hacker News Reader

Well, the problem is that many desktop workflows require data passing through many apps. How would you do that on the iOS model?

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iOS has 2 solutions to this. They have a push models where you “share” the file to the next app you want to use. And they also have a traditional file store model where all apps can request to save and request to load files.

Critically, apps can not directly read your files, they can show a button which will open the OS file picker and the user can pick a file to open which then provides access to the app.

This means that opening a game does not instantly expose all of your sensitive files.

> Critically, apps can not directly read your files, they can show a button which will open the OS file picker and the user can pick a file to open which then provides access to the app.

Unfortunately this model breaks down for any kind of file type that doesn't simply consist of a single, atomic file, e.g. various constellations of media files (playlists, subtitles, multi-part videos), multi-part archives, HTML files, georeferenced imagery with sidecar files, etc. etc.

iOS apps can be given access to files and folders created in other apps. I have no idea when this was added, I didn't use iOS between 3.x and 14.x, but it's there.

https://juno.sh/ios-file-system/ for some info about how it works from the perspective of an application that might need to access other apps' data.

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