Why we need files
Great read from Filepicker.io. The so-called fileless operating system (the article picks on the iOS, but countless other applications abound) can’t provide any semblance of interoperability, which leads to apps doing everything poorly.
This is wrong. Files are abstraction layers around content that are necessary for interoperability. Without the notion of a File or other similar shared content abstraction, the ability to use different applications with the same information grinds to a halt, which hampers innovation and user experience. If one application wants to work with the contents of another, they must explicitly decide to do so, decided upon a shared representation, and then manually integrate. This encourages applications to try to build everything themselves, resulting in big applications with lots of mediocre features rather than lots of specialized applications that each do one thing really well. iOS has been the thought leader advocating for a fileless world, but their weaknesses are begining to show. Photoshop Touch is great, but I can’t share or print, because the application hasn’t explictly integrated it.
