Comments on: The Evil File System

By: Josephine Swiss

Josephine Swiss — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:48:56 +0000

completely agree with the gradual deconstruction of hierarchies – however this is not what apple is doing; apple is clean washing one level as to give the impression of an organic organisation structure, to then fix this dimension while in fact reducing flexibility. how can a reduction in self-organisation possibilities be an advancement? i want to be able to organize my content/applications/etc. myself and not be dependent on a commercial central stored on demand knowledge body. the only area where a participatory option is granted is the programing of apps, but even these then are subject to commercial control by apple. as long as a system works with hidden hierarchies, which at the time being is uncircumventable, then covering these up reinforces the prevalent hierarchies instead of liberating creative knowledge. this is why jailbreaking iphones is so popular – it comes closer to a convergence of what the device is actually capable of. it is so great to imagine what could be done with an ipad if it weren’t bound to commercial restrictions!

By: Abi Raja

Abi Raja — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:00:18 +0000

Robert, when I say “all humans”, I mean that babies don’t get born understanding the concept of files and filenames. Of course, you and I have learnt what files are and these abstractions are very useful for us. There’s some value in preserving systems that people have become accustomed to. But ultimately, if there’s a better alternative, we should gradually move to that.

By: Robert Kaiser

Robert Kaiser — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:33:28 +0000

I meant thanks for telling me I’m not human, actually. Now I know why I felt they are too dumb for me.

By: Robert Kaiser

Robert Kaiser — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:32:20 +0000

Thanks for telling my that I'm not part of "people", I already ass-u-me-d that.

And thanks for putting all people's thinking into the same pocket. Good things we don't have free minds and everyone follows where Apple heads.

By: Abi Raja

Abi Raja — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 08:33:38 +0000

Noah, the problem with hierarchies (the primary kind of organization in computers) is that they are hard to change. And any human's organization is constantly evolving. I've had long discussions with people in particular about how email organization has changed over the years (Eudora's folders vs. GMail's labels) and I think labels/tags + user-defined rules serve as great substitutes for hierarchy while being completely "evolve-able".

You would think that because naming things is such a common cognitive task for humans in the real-world, that would mean that filenames are a great abstraction. But in practice, we find that filenames are really nothing like naming in the real-world because people often remember what was in a file (or a summary of the file; hence, the great the suggestion in the iPad HIG to make files and file handling highly graphical) rather than what they explicitly named it.

Mugunth, Yep, that's what UIFileSharingEnabled is for.

By: Mugunth

Mugunth — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 06:22:35 +0000

I believe apps will be able to sync their desktop equivalent with the iPad. Like, AirSharing Pro can sync files from mac to iPad, and 1password pro can sync data between iPad and mac and so on. If I’m able to hook into iTunes sync ie., get a callback when the user syncs the iPad, it will be even great.

By: Noah Kantrowitz

Noah Kantrowitz — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 06:06:52 +0000

Eh, people do seem to like hierarchies an awful lot though; based on how often they show up you can probably make some assumptions that it is a hardwired way to look at the world. Not saying I disagree with an infinite undo model instead of storing files, but there is nothing wrong with the underlying organization.