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Comment by alper | Hacker News Reader

I am amazed at how every single one idea in there is either stupid from the onset or the concept given is executed in an absolutely braindead way.

Just one: direct file access. The best thing Apple did for the learning curve of computing is destroy the concept of files for the casual user. The restrictions are put on the designer who has to figure out a creative way to enable task fulfillment within those restrictions. That is not a file picker (with Folders no less).

The most important enhancement is not even on the list: an iPad with several hundred apps is totally unwieldable. That should be fixed.

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>> "The most important enhancement is not even on the list: an iPad with several hundred apps is totally unwieldable. That should be fixed."

This isn't a problem very many people face. The average iPhone user only has 65 apps installed (Source:Flurry) (I don't know about the iPad but I guess it would be around the same). Apple typically doesn't cater to the needs of a minority.

With folders you should be able to get a very large number of apps on your iPad's first home screen. I think it's around 400 (20 folders x 20 apps per folder).

That would force me to spend time to manually drag everything into folders with the same cataloguing problem you face in every other domain after which I would not really be able to locate anything else.

True, the fact that I have this many apps is a professional deformation, but still the app life cycle from installing/updating, to managing/organizing, to finding and launching one is severely broken from its mental model on.

I agree that managing a large number of apps can be tricky. What kind of solution would you like to see? Generally I just use spotlight. One swipe, type a few letters, and the app is found.

What's the solution to mobile file system management, then? Android has a lot going for it with its plug-and-play-esque filesystems: installed Dropbox? Now every app that uses the File API can save/load files from your Dropbox. On iOS each developer has to specifically implement each file service in each app - that's not the future.

no file system management. Or, put another way "We've invented this thing called an automobile" - "I don't get it, where do I attach my horses?"

So how do I open files made in app A in B?

I know right, where's the hitch? Where DO I attach my horses?

Are you suggesting that there is no need to have open file formats? No need to use more than 1 app on a single file?

I'm saying that your reasoning about the problem is stuck on outdated metaphors, and your imagination may be irrevokably damaged. You are asking the wrong questions, and so the only possible answer is "mu" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(negative)

Let me put this another way- Having to work with files is a problem which is caused by computers. It is not a problem that existed before computers which is now solved by them. There are LOTS of alternative metaphors that have been tried and written about and researched before which you can simply just go find out about if you ever decide to look into it. The reason none of these alternatives have been adopted widely is because the file system metaphore has just simply been too ingrained. iOS is now the first system that has half a chance of shedding the metaphor once and for all, and people whose minds have been damaged by experience with file systems now simply want to add it back in. What a tragedy.

Okay here's a freebee. Have you ever been working on a large paper, and you forget to "save" your "file", and your computer crashes and you lose your work? That is a clue to the problems with this metaphor.

You're deflecting the question. Computers have documents, files, or whatever it is that you want to call them. Some times we want to edit them with more than 1 program. How do you propose that we do so, absent the file metaphor? Perhaps there is a better way, I look forward to your solution.

Or perhaps you are suggesting that we shouldn't have documents at all? We shouldn't have word processors or spreadsheets, or pictures. I can't tell because your comments lack directness.

But you still have "files" (or whatever you want to call them now) - how are they going to be managed? Borrowing the above example, if I'm composing an email I may want to bring in bits of data from several apps - a presentation, a picture, some formatted text, a geo location, etc. Doing this on an iPhone in a single email is currently impossible.

Wouldn't you just use copy and paste?

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