ChasingTheFlow

Apple reinventing file access, wireless sharing for iPad

Apple is dramatically rethinking how applications organize their documents on iPad, leaving behind the jumbled file system and making file access between the iPad and desktop computers seamless.

In a move foreshadowed by the Newton Message Pad fifteen years ago, Apple’s new iPad jettisons the conventional shared file system and introduces a new, streamlined convention for working with document files that ordinary users should find much more understandable.

Outside of savvy computer users, the idea of opening a file by searching through hierarchical paths in the file system is a bit of a mystery. Add in the concept of local and cloud file servers and things really get confusing.

Apple has already taken some steps to hide complexity in the file system in Mac OS X; Spotlight search was supposed to make a file’s location almost irrelevant, while apps such as iTunes, iPhoto, and Photo Booth now present their databases of content in media folders within the open file panel rather that forcing users to slog through the underlying file system.

(Continue reading on RoughlyDrafted)