File Systems is also a complexity that confuses a lot of non-technical people, which is why Apple tries to hide that one even exists on iOS - Where can I find the latest document I was working on? Just open the app you created it with, as a bonus you'll get transparent syncing across all your devices.
Syncing and Backup are tedial tasks most people wouldn't do if they needed to do it manually or configure an external program / service to do it.
It's one thing to have a persistent object store instead of a file system (as the Newton did). It's wholly another to have a file system at the core of your OS but just pretend it doesn't exist. That's a regressive obfuscation, not encapsulation.
Apple's primary focus is on UX simplicity and Customers couldn't care less how it's implemented behind the scenes, they just want to get stuff done, find the Word document they were working on or see the Photo or Video they just took.
The less Customers have to know about how technology works the happier they are, and the more successful Apple is.
You're right that as a matter of routine, having recent documents worked with in an app come up on opening it (and an easy visual list of all the files the app has touched) is a great interaction pattern.
That says nothing about whether or not there should be some kind of file browser, or other means for users to become aware and able to interact with files outside an app.
Particularly because at some point, single-app workflows hit their limits, and getting stuff done either becomes a matter of using multiple apps or waiting for an app to grow the new feature you need (the latter of which is not just getting stuff done).
And I'm not just talking about Power Users -- I've seen this happen with my mom (proverbial disinterested computer user), who generally is quite happy to be completely unaware of the file system, but still periodically runs into corner cases where she needs to do something no single app will let her do (usually audio-file related).
This all reminds me of the discussion around hiding URLs in browsers:
For decades, we had a system where people who didn't care to pay any attention to URL bars could ignore them, and people who were incidentally curious could learn useful things by paying attention, people who needed to discover them could, and people found them regularly useful had them at the ready.
Then somebody who got caught up in a shallow idea of simplicity that neglects utility and discoverability decided they'd make a UX change that was hostile to all of latter two groups. After all... the first group doesn't care, they just want to navigate the web and get stuff done.
The right principle here is to make the simple case easy and obvious, and the more complex case discoverably possible.
No the key part is what target audience and use-cases are they optimizing for with each device.
Do they want to create an experience that's so simple to use that they're enjoyed by both kids and non-technical grand parents, that's optimized for the most common everyday tasks, e.g browsing the web, shopping, reading news, books, taking photos, finding driving directions, writing emails, etc.
Or do they want to offer a full Desktop OS that's suitable for everyone including devs and power users lets them run server software, multiple windows, anti virus software, network filesystems, development IDE's that enables them to build iOS Apps, etc. For those users they offer OSX on macbooks and iMac's and choose not to complicate their UX on their most popular computing platform - that's quickly becoming most of their Customers primary computing platform.
It's Apple's felicitous focus on simplicity and Customer use-cases that's what's made them the most successful company in the world.
I like how "multiple windows" is suddenly considered an advanced feature.
You're confusing simplicity with ease of use. Adding a layer of indirection over the intrinsic file system is not simple, and even ease of use is debatable, since it creates an impedance mismatch by definition.
Nor is there any reason to consider this a zero-sum game. Having advanced features does not deprive the common user of their comfort, as they will simply not make use of them.
I'm of course not the target audience for iPads, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking they're anything but a toy. It takes something much more serious for a new computer generation to usurp its predecessor, and if mobile device manufacturers continue in this fashion, they might win only a technicality - market share. As opposed to the usual test of whether a platform is able to bootstrap its own system software, which iOS and Android emphatically cannot.
> I'm of course not the target audience for iPads, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking they're anything but a toy.
iPads have been getting a lot of productivity improvements lately, however many have decided they're just a toy and in doing so have been rather blind to their advance. To just name one, extensions allow inter-app handoff and are quite powerful at this point and well received by iOS devs and power users. Extensions solve the document transfer use case discussed in this subthread, and they don't invoke cognitive load around filesystems. I'm hoping we can use 3d Touch to trigger them from the share button to further improve their efficiency. But that's cool, lets all keep dragging files around with a mouse or typing in terminal and wait where did I save that file I was just working on again?
Another way to think about this is with iOS, Apple is going down the list from most common to least common use cases for end users, whereas over the last several decades with CLI and then WIMP interfaces, traditional PC devs have been going up the list of use cases from most dev-oriented to most end user. Nothing wrong with the results of the latter for development, but it turns out there's a lot more end users than there are devs, and an exposed filesystem is a sacred cow of that the latter approach that can be solved in more than one way for the end user.
> It takes something much more serious for a new computer generation to usurp its predecessor
Mainframe guys said the exact same thing about minicomputers.
But that's cool, lets all keep dragging files around with a mouse or typing in terminal and wait where did I save that file I was just working on again?
How are those things innate to having a hierarchical file system? A straw man if I ever saw one.
Mainframe guys said the exact same thing about minicomputers.
And they were right. Minicomputers didn't take in definitively until they became self-hosting.
> How are those things innate to having a hierarchical file system? A straw man if I ever saw one.
Not innate to having an hfs, just innate to using one. Of course you could drag files around with your finger, or tap into subfolders, or use the keyboard, but those are not taking advantage of strengths of the platform. Meanwhile share sheet extensions are well suited to the modern paradigm of touch, social, and cloud, where the target of a file may or may not be a local filesystem or even an app in its strictest sense. This interface represents an alternative to finding files in folders when working between apps, which is where my comparison was directed.
Maybe I misunderstood and you're arguing that iOS doesn't have a hierarchical file system, but thats opposite of what you were complaining about (obfuscated file systems) earlier in this thread. lmk.
> And they were right. Minicomputers didn't take in definitively until they became self-hosting.
Minicomputers were still considered 'less serious' than the mainframes long after they stopped being terminals, and they were capable of far less. Unless I misunderstood and you're arguing that iPads have not yet reached some modern equivalence to self-hosting... and that equivalence must involve an exposed file system... because it must be able to bootstrap its own operating system...? Genuinely confused by this rebuttal, but open to hearing your ideas.
No I'm not confusing simplicity with ease of use, I'm referring to the simplicity from the users perspective (i.e. what matters most) which is the conceptual and cognitive overhead required for them to know to accomplish what they want to do. In the same way a GUI Desktop is simpler and more comfortable to use for most people than DOS or a single Google search box or voice input are simple enough for anyone to use despite the complexity they encapsulate.
Apple starts from the user experience first and works their way back to the technology. Technology is just an obstacle in order for them to be able to accomplish their desired experiences, it's not something they put front-and-center or use it to limit or influence how and what features are implemented.
Kids can use an iPad without ever needing to know what a File System is, there is no impedance mismatch to them, they're not spending their time thinking about how their multi-layered video that just created is physically stored and synced. They just use an App for a while, switch to other apps, then re-open their app when they want to continue working on it.
Exposing internals like file-system layout means the OS is no longer managing the files, they need to cater for manipulations whilst still supporting transparent cloud backups and syncing, they need to design a completely different UI for power users with lots of features all working with multi-touch yet still have the features power users expect from a Desktop OS, e.g. downloads to be in a central "Downloads" folder instead of being grouped and isolated in the App that downloaded them.
You've at least acknowledged you're not the iPad's primary audience but labelling it as just a toy means you've still failed to realize its appeal. Smart Phones and tablets are becoming the primary computing platform because they empower users to be able to do more, Apps are optimized around use-cases and tasks making them much easier and more enjoyable to use than Desktop software.
I have a lot of anecdotal evidence on how the iPad is the only computing device my parents have ever enjoyed, how after so many years they still can't conceptualize how files and folders are structured, where their documents are saved, how full-screen windows and pop dialogs makes them think their PC is broken.
Even myself as a power user I find lots of apps that are much better on an iPad, inc. more advanced tasks like browsing and comparing real-estate is so much faster and effortless. There's also tasks that you just can't do on a PC or are frustrating enough that you wouldn't bother with, e.g. Making phone or video calls, taking and sending photos, Live Directions and Traffic, paying for coffee, even core tasks like browsing photos, Facebook or the Internet are generally more enjoyable on an iPad.
But ultimately anecdotal evidence is useless as everyone can provide their own to contradict them, the best indicator we have to go with is Sales and by this measure Apple's recent iOS strategy is a lot more fruitful then their decades old Desktop OS strategy - they have no reason to make iPad's more like OSX - they're reaching and empowering more people then they ever have, they're making the technology a transparent implementation detail so much so that iPads are often referred to as a magical pieces of glass.
Don't iOS require some additional software to copy over files. When the easiest and simplest way is just drag and drop which is available for Android users.
If you go by sales wouldn't then Android figures indicate that their approach was better?
> Don't iOS require some additional software to copy over files. When the easiest and simplest way is just drag and drop which is available for Android users.
Are your saying most android devices act like USB cards? I decided to test one of mine and it didn't show up so I don't quite know what you mean by that.
> If you go by sales wouldn't then Android figures indicate that their approach was better?
And if you go by profits it looks like Apple is better. Funny how that works out.
Yes most android devices act like that. I see my device as a drive in the system. Drag and Drop nothing is more simpler then that.
Op had mentioned "Apple starts from the user experience" which users prefer hence they have great sales. I questioned since Android has far better sales. I don't know what profits have to do with user experience. If users preferred Apple approach should it not then have more sales?
Android has more sales in the same way free apps have more sales than paid Apps. Apple only targets the high end which is why they reap a majority of the profits whilst most Android manufacturers can't even sell enough devices to cover costs, despite using a free OS they never had to sink R&D into.
As for UX I didn't think it could ever be argued that Android was even comparable to iOS, you can look at the sat ranking for how well iOS is received, or even browser market share where the majority of mobile web is still from iOS - which is a good indicator on how much devices are being used for non-phone features, despite having fewer devices in the wild.
So changing the parameters again? Apple has good sales in countries which have subsidies. If majority are buying at full price i would have agreed with you. But the subsidized prices equal to mid-budget mobiles where i live India(Buyers here actually pay the high end amount for Apple). If android was loss making those companies would have quit already.
In my opninion Material is way better then iOS.
" majority of mobile web " - statcounter, netshare already put chrome/android ahead!
Anyway the point was Apple UI is not always intuitive. I even didn't know that toolbar icons can be long pressed on my mac-pro for a long time!
And drag and drop is the simplest/intuitive way to copy files from medium to another which iOS totally messed it up.
> No the key part is what target audience and use-cases are they optimizing for with each device.
What if, as in the URL example I gave, there are multiple overlapping target audiences?
Of course you optimize the common case. The question is whether in the process you're going to decide to ignore or eliminate discoverability in less common cases. Don't use "audience" as an excuse to be lazy about them.
And both mobile and desktop are general computing devices with a wide range of abilities. Deciding mobile is the PlaySkool version is itself an oversimplification.
> Apple's felicitous focus on simplicity and Customer use-cases that's what's made them the most successful company in the world
One can learn a lot from their success. It hasn't them perfect. They still make some poor or even user-hostile decisions.
Their success does, however, seem to render some people less inclined to think critically about their choices.
You know, I've heard this argument on customers not caring about this or that oversimplification or about this or that restriction or about customizations or about poor grandmas and so forth.
But you know, numbers don't lie. iOS is not the dominant design. And guess what I have on my Android? A file manager, going hand in hand with uTorrent and VLC. And guess how I'm copying music on my phone? It's not through iTunes, thank god for that.
That said the iPad Pro is a device that intrigues me, since with the stylus and the keyboard if might actually be more useful than a paperstand.
And where are you getting the stat? Years ago maybe not these days. The newer $100 mobiles sometimes are way better then say 200-300 mobiles. And btw messaging would be a app. Nobody uses sms where i live. All are on whatsapp.
Remember - the discussion is about what platform is dominant. The fact that messaging is implemented an app doesn't change that. New developments occur on iOS first for a reason.
The numbers don't lie, but you are focusing on the wrong one. Loss making businesses by cannot be dominant. Samsung is the only profitable Android maker and it is collapsing while Apple continues to grow.
If its loss making then why are companies continuously releasing new Android mobiles. They should have shut shop. Samsung isn't even dominant where i live. There are many local brands releasing one Android mobile over another.
Anyway it seems useless continuing this. I suppose you would come back some other Apple this and that line. I just wanted to know where you got the stat. Since i am not getting any references i assume you made it up.
The functionality is available within the context of the feature you're using. If it's a Word document you open the document, click the share icon and click "Send Attachment". Apple's Pages also has a Share icon that even lets you easily convert to Word, PDF, or ePub format before sending.
For attaching whilst composing an email in Gmail (what I use) there's an "Attach" icon that lets you attach photos or files from Google Drive. Whilst Apple's Mail lets you click the cursor on where you want to add the Photo/Video.
This works great until it doesn't. Sometimes when you try using the "Share" or "Open In..." buttons, the medium you want to use is not an option. If that's the case, there is no way to manually change it. For example: we have guys who use iPads instead of PCs. When we were first implementing this, we discovered that even though they had Excel for iPad installed, you couldn't open an Excel document attached to an email in Excel. The Open In... dialogue didn't offer Excel as an option. I ended up just using Numbers instead, which brought its own problems (like not fully supporting the .xlsx format).
If the feature was considered important enough to complicate the UI there'd be an option or optimized App for the task, otherwise no-one thought it was important or cared enough to support it.
Right, Apple decided it wasn't important so that means it isn't important?
Being on an e-mail thread where someone says "hey, can you e-mail over that spreadsheet?" is hardly rare. Things like this are the reason why the iPad has not been a huge success as a productivity tool.
> Right, Apple decided it wasn't important so that means it isn't important?
I was referring to all Mail Apps, I don't even use Apple Mail, I use Gmail.
Yes Apple decides what's important in their App, Google decides what's important in theirs, Everyone else decides...
> Being on an e-mail thread where someone says "hey, can you e-mail over that spreadsheet?" is hardly rare.
You can still send spreadsheet attachments, open said Spread sheet, hit share attachment, Done. Go back to playing games.
> iPad has not been a huge success as a productivity tool.
So catering for a smaller class of enterprise and power users should be the holy metric Apple should be catering for?
Apple has OSX for power users, iOS for everyone else. That strategy seems to be working quite well for them.
In iOS9 you tap on a blank area of the message then select 'add attachment' to browse for the file. It supports iCloud Drive, DropBox, OneDrive, and presumably any other apps that support the cloud storage APIs introduced last year in iOS8. Alternatively you can use the traditional method of exporting a file from an app into Mail.
Even better - you're on a job website that wants your CV. How do you upload the file using the HTML forms interface?
On iPad it just DISAPPEARS. You can't upload a file.
That's why every job company has their own app harvesting your data, and it requires scores of bulky apps to get around the simple HTML form omission. Insane.
at the cost of interoperability. It's hard to impossible to transfer doc from app A to app B. You don't have a work flow or tool chain, you just have one mega app to do it all.
The whole OS file system yes. But for most non technical people the desktop would be the file system. They usually created folders after folders. Those are very easy to learn and understand.
Syncing and Backup are tedial tasks most people wouldn't do if they needed to do it manually or configure an external program / service to do it.