why does google(or apple) need "special interfaces" to access the filesystem in a specific way, why don't they just use the existing file api and improve the file access permission system.
I think the unix single tree filesystem was one of their great innovations and see this multi tree api fragmentation bullshit as a sort of backwards regression.
My cynical read is that the filesystem is user freedom, and the walled gardens don't want user freedom.
Try asking an elderly user of an Android phone where the attachments from gmail they have tried to save are stored in.
I think they'd cope a lot better with a standard folder/file hierarchy as opposed to saving into a folder/file hierarchy but never at any point telling the user where in the hierarchy they saved to!
And every app saves to a different location. I've been using computers my entire life and I generally have to resort to a file manager to find what I'm looking for.