Apple reinventing file access, wireless sharing for iPad - Page 12

For now, at least, there's no editing.

Text, yes. No photo editing yet. But I would be surprised if we didn't see something before too long.

What are you talking about!? I expect to use it to produce/edit/share my iWork-Office documents in a HUGE way. I am hoping that, over time, it will allow for seamless reading from and writing to Office documents (right now, iWork is pretty good, but not perfect, in that regard), and hopefully, as apps get more numerous and varies, enable me to do serious statistical computations, data analysis and such.

If it was simply a 'consuming' device, it would be a failure. After all, we will need no more than a 'smart' TV for that.

I agree, part of your post is pretty pathetic.

Perhaps you could criticize what you think the product is, without going on a tirade.

Lol, good reference. I guess many people on these boards will not agree with you as they are too nostalgic of the 80s )

Not a very substantiated comment for someone who has almost 20,000 messages on these boards to his credit ...

It was specific enough. I'm sure people know exactly what I meant.

I don't understand why people are opposed to what apple is doing.

Do you really believe the current file hierarchy of mac os x on a desktop would port well to the ipad? Why would I want to hunt around in finder ,trying to touch hundreds of little icons to preview which folder I should open. Sounds much easier to open pages and have all my files which could possibly be associated with that app right there.

What isvthis nonesense about the file being tied to the app? Sure, when I open any camera related app on my iPhone, all my pics are there, yet when I delete a camera app, all my photos don't disappear.

It's not like you'll try to open something in brushes and this error message will pop up saying the photo is already associated with facebook and cannot open. There will be one spot for all my photos, one for all my .mov, one for .doc etc.

As someone who regularly helps people with their macs, in all the years I've been doing it, at least 90% of the issues revolve around people not understanding file structures. In fact, for all of you botching this is a bad idea, I bet a good portion of you have duplicate files laying around because if the confusion between downloads for the system, downloads for the user, applications for the system and applications for the user. Hell, TUAW, a blog for apple nerds, regularly has to post articles explaining how you don't want to open files from the download stack/folder because it will reinstall them.

In other words, judging by the comments, most of the people complaining about this system are so out of the loop of file structures that your complaints don't even make sense, ie the sandboxing of documents which is absolutely not at all described in this article. If you don't see how this is a natural evolution of file structure, you prolly don't know what your talking about and this setup is specifically for people like you.

That's the big problem now, isn't it? Applications should not be organizing, users should be organizing. Don't tell me what to do.

The main reason I left Windows so many years ago was because I grew weary of the damn computer telling me how I should be computing.

If the iPad didn't have to rely on another computer, if it could stand on it's own, then it would be a "revolutionary" device indeed, rather than just a larger Touch with better software.

But attaching documents to their applications is pathetic at best. One of the single most convenient elements of a computer is having a folder that contains all the data that might be included in some project - such as a brochure, where an Excel spreadsheet you received from your engineering group holds some data; an Excel spreadsheet from the finance team holds other information; copies of all the individual images used in the brochure; and, snippets of email, quotes, and other key data sources used in the body of the document.

Using the "revolutionary" file mismanagement system of the iPad, I now must remember the exact file name of each image in every damn project ever done, so I can locate it in the fabulous "media browser." Talk about a time sink. Spreadsheets are attached to email (not even it's actual application!) which may or may not still exist in Mail over time; everything else is scattered about. Who can remember all this crap? I thought that's what computers were for, to make this stuff easier, not harder.

AppleInsider's column suggests that the lowest level of users cannot fathom the hierarchical file system of a computer. This is idiotic at best. These are Apple's new customer targets? Well, they're going to need to re-design iTunes then, that's for sure.

The underlying concern - even more important than making the iPad difficult if not impossible for project work - is having an inanimate object tell me how I'm going to work, what I'm going to do, and exactly where I'm going to store my stuff.

Revolutionary, indeed. It's like that hammer never did get thrown.

FCP n the Ipad? I don't really see how that would be useful. Unless the footage was h264 encoded and it didn't require any transcoding for I/O, the footage would choke it even if it were only SD DV.

You might see an Imovie for the tablet, but again it will be designed for h264 capture systems like the flip or the iphone camera and that's about it. Besides there are already several solid editors for the "I" devices. No need for apple to do a thing.

Pro is not Apple's market with this device. Maybe in five or ten years, if touch evolves into larger, more powerful devices. but we're no where near that stage.

This thread is annoying and yet staggering at the same time, for people's inability to realise the difference between an iPad and a desktop computer.

Some stuff people would do well to realise:

Tablets with desktop OSs have been tried before and have failed - miserably.

Most people don't use file systems 'properly' - especially the people who would likely use the tablet. The reasons why this is the case are moot.

If you are a computer whizz, it won't be that hard for you to understand the new way of working and adapt accordingly.

All this talk of 'project folders' is madness. Due to the way this device is intrinsically linked to a 'real' computer, if you are using it to create content, you'll most likely create a document or two, then copy them to your desktop machine. The same reason also makes the whole 'what if I've got hundreds of documents to look through?' question a non point - you probably shouldn't have hundreds of documents on it.

This question of 'what happens when I delete this app or that app?' is pointless. We don't know the exact details of the file system. It might ask what you want to do with the documents contained in the app folder. It might not actually store files directly in those folders, but rather the abstraction makes it seem this way.


Basically, we don't know much about how things will work. It might be that the iPad becomes the most amazing content creation system ever, and outgrows the simplified filesystem, at which point the design might change.

Someone made the point earlier about how this is going back to the 80s in terms of complexity, and marking that down as a bad thing. It's likely that new models will emerge as the 'best way' of doing things as the new technology and ways of working change.

Nothing is set in stone. Things change.

So you're angry and indignant that a product that hasn't been released, that you don't know very much about and which you're under no compulsion to buy is "telling you what to do"?

And you go further to dream up use scenarios that further enrage you, again without really knowing any particulars, and conclude that this all must mean Apple is making machines for stupid people.

That's all, I just like to savor the insanity.

And it's not just files systems. We just migrated email systems - the bulk of the migration was a few weeks ago. Now people are starting to come out of the woodwork complaining they can't find their contacts. Upon following up with a few users their contacts did indeed migrate - but the bulk of the contacts they used were in their recent contacts - the system generated list from when you first email someone!

We have had to go back and show people how on the old mail client they can move the contacts they want from their recent contacts to their contacts, and then re-migrate their contacts to the new system. Totally unanticipated because to techie's, it's logical - recent contacts and trash aren't permanent storage. But getting "normal people" to understand such concepts... It's why Apple is so successful - they focus on usability. Not for geeks, but "for the rest of us". I think it's also why despite being so derided in the technical press they are so successful in the real world.

It's not an issue of complexity, because you are right - it is no harder than a file cabinet.

It's a conceptual issue. I can't explain it, but I see it all the time. My own father - a very smart man. Self-made, very successful, financially well off, wrote technical reports for years on complex engineering projects - is even published. My parents built their own house, out of pocket, doing the vast majority of the work. Clearly these are people capable of logic, independent thought and organization.

But give them a computer and it's like that part of their brain switches off. Give them instructions and it's like there is this mental block. I ask them how is me giving you three things to do on a computer different then giving you a three part recipe to cook something? They have no problem following recipes to cook - but when it comes to technology they are baffled. I really do think it comes down to conceptualization and reference - they have a hard time "connecting the dots" internally. It's obvious. And I don't know what you can do to get around it.

And just when I think about things like the above, for a moment I will wonder what is looming on the horizon that will be the same for me that my kids think is trivial and I'm a dunce for not getting. I try to keep that thought as fleeting as possible

For every vocal whiner on the internet there are millions like me who are quite happy with mobileme (and .Mac before).

It's 1990 - here's your floppy drive.

At least you didn't complain it's lacking a BluRay or DVD burner so I suppose that's something to be grateful for.

Excellent post. I've elsewhere posted a semi-inflammatory rant about this strange world we've made, wherein perfectly normal people are belittled as being "stupid" for not having an affinity for the kind of abstract systems thinking computer operating systems represent.

And computer file systems are definitely not "no more difficult" than a physical filing cabinet, for the simple reason that it's not a real filing cabinet.

Abstract representations of things are not the same as the thing itself, do not engage the same parts of the brain, and do not involve a directly transferable set of skills. The statement "I take the paper and put in it the folder labeled 'important stuff'" is not the same as actually taking a piece of paper and putting it into an actual folder, and the system of symbols and codified actions that represent that process within a computer operating system aren't the same as either doing or saying that.

Now consider the actual level of abstraction that all these ostensibly trivially easy to use "actions" involve when using a computer, wherein one must bear in mind that this thing we're calling a "desktop" is somehow different from other "files" which appear in "windows", things get "saved" to "places" that we're not actually sure where they are, there is an uncertain, mutable relationship between "files" and "applications", and "hierarchies" may loop back on themselves.

None of that has fuck-all to do with the real world that evolutionary biology has so exquisitely equipped us to handle. It's the world of recursive math and rigid logic, with the merest scrim of "usability" pasted on, using a metaphor now 30 years old.

People who are conversant with these particular abstractions, who smirk and giggle and imagine that people who don't care to contort their thinking according to the dictates of computer science are "stupid", need to be slapped, hard, over and over again, until they shut the fuck up.

I couldn't be more sincere about this, the rise the IT personality as some kind of necessary evil is really, really depressing thing. If not for the unyielding complexity of the systems they smugly inhabit, we would have kicked them unconscious long ago, just on general principles.

Which is why it's so very interesting to see people with exactly that personality so strenuously attack the very idea of something like the iPad. My most fervent wish is that Apple's model takes off, and you assholes lose your one and only significant asset. At which point we rediscover the simple fact that obsessive compulsive hyper-left brained geeks are actually incredibly unpleasant and probably best shunned.

Sofabutt copied the entire article just to complain about MobileMe and Cloud Computing, despite the article not being about that.It made no sense.



Huntercr Apparently doesn't understand that there is USB on all iDevices and that for the iPad there are ways to get connect cameras to the device to grab images. Makes sense to me that other file types will be allowed as well, but nothing to get upset over until we have a conformation.

I had an elderly user ask me where all her emails had gone. She said they'd disappeared. She showed me her outlook client and pointed out that the Inbox for the new emails was fine, but all her older mails that she'd stored in the trash had gone.

I expressed my concern, and (with humour) said the same thing happened to me a few weeks ago. On my regular desk I'd had all my sheets of paper that I was working with, and I had filed all the things I'd finished working with but might need later in the trash/bin under the desk. I came in one morning and they were gone!

She understood and actually had a bit of a laugh. Normally I would have explained rather than made a joke of it... and in the past with things like this the users get embarassed and say how stupid they are as a starting point, so this track actually seemed to be more effective in the short term AND she hasn't stored things in the trash since.

...and people wonder why IT guys aren't all that popular.

Looks like addabox has it about right.

Exactly!


For once, i think this is a fundamental change with a really positive result. Getting rid of folder/file structures is a big move but with so many benefits. It works well for iPhoto and Aperture, and i think it would work well for a whole system

I agree a huge number of problems come from the file system. Partly because there are differences that people don't understand - like 2 application folders. Partly because while by default when you drag files in your own structure it moves them but copies when dragged to external disks or servers. We attach files to email (or receive them in emails) and they become extra copies. The file system behind iPhoto and iTunes is entirely unrelated to the other main file system. And iPhoto and iTunes make file management more complex because deleting a photo/song from an 'album' doesn't delete it, you have to go to the library for that. Fun and games.

But having a flat file system is not an answer. Have you tried finding a movie on AppleTV once it has a large number? Even finding a trailer is busy enough. The AppleTV interface was hailed as simple to use but didn't scale well to larger numbers of files.

AppleInsider's Prince McLean does say that each app will be responsible for storing its own data/files. And that the iPad will share its data to the computer, looking like a single folder with a subfolder for each app's data. He may not be right, but that's what he said.

It strikes me that an application-based file system is really pretty well the same as the current filesystems for iTunes and iPhoto.

iTunes and iPhoto both have a single library full of files. They then have a system for managing those files - which involves 'albums' that point to library files, smart "search based" folders, etc. If iMovie needs a photo it co-operates with iPhoto's filing method (same for music from iTunes)

So in some ways this new system for the iPad seems to broaden that idea. Every app is responsible for its set of files, but apps can allow other apps access to their data to some degree.

I'd rather something else. To start with it might be useful to have a filesystem where there really is only one copy of every file unless we explicitly ask for a 2nd copy. Our files are in too many places at the moment, but there are ways of working on that other than making individual apps responsible.

Do read - he was talking about the iPhone, not the iPad.

Then I guess you're missing the point. A new user doesn't need a computer, all music, content can exist on this device and doesn't need synching to anything. The only thing to sync would be an existing itunes library and existing photo's. It's you who isn't thinking outside the box, not apple.

This is a media consumption device, not a laptop/desktop replacement. It's a low end, commercial, consumer device. Do try and understand that.

What is with people not being able to see that this is a media consumption device for people who aren't technically savvy?!

Agreed, my household are all mobileme, and all very, very happy with this consumer level service. It's those who try to run businesses from it, and sync 20/30 meg + files that run into trouble.

People use a domestic/consumer service as a business level technology because they're too cheap to invest in a high end architecture. Their issue, not Apples.

I've been following posts on this and other sites over the weekend.

People complaining about no usb, no SD, no full operating system.

People basically complaining that this isn't the device that they wanted from Apple, and that because it's not what these tech-heads want, it will fail.

I've got news for you.

You might try and push the bounds of this device - and good on your for trying, it will help Apple to determine interest in some form of high-end touch computing device.

This isn't it.

It wasn't intended to be.

It's a toy for mum to read books sat on the sofa, check her email, write a church newsletter and browse the web.

That is all.

So many people missing the point.

Of course there is a lot of potential for a device such as this. But this is not that device, this is an inexpensive, low-end, beautiful, toy. And it will do just fine.

It doesn't NEED to be or do anything else.

If you'd like it to be, then fine - but it isn't - and this doesn't make it a failed product. If you don't see the point, don't buy it - Apple don't care.

I think that comment is unfair, at least about myself and for my example.

I am a counsellor, hypnotherapist, trainer, and tech-support - and I'm quite sensitive to the person I'm working with and what approach is likely to be most effective for learning new behaviours.

In the example of a person using the trash as a filing cabinet, there aren't a lot of ways to explain the usage of trash without them responding "I'm an idiot" (after which I'd tell them they're not, compliment them on not using the Inbox as their receptacle of all emails they've ever got, and show them how to use folders). My joking with this user and using normal desk/trash usage was something she understood well, instantly expanded her thoughts to how she normally does file things herself, and allowed me to use her own regular behaviours to teach how outlook could fit that.

This kind of joke-to-help works or fails based on how it it presented and who it is presented to.

All that said - I think file management has long surpassed the simple metaphors that worked when they appeared on the Mac 25 years ago.


I think the iPad is brilliant, re-inventing how we think of computers. It'll change and progress and grow in big ways - for now Apple HAS to force a very strict usage type on it to stop users/reporters/developers from approaching it like a regular computer, so that the new interaction method has a chance to take hold.

And that's exactly in line with what you're saying - existing IT people have a specific mindset, that Apple knows they need to change. So Apple presents something that appears crippled by traditionally tech standards, and yet does so many useful things. They'll probably prevent apps which are poorly ported from OSX even though they'll run fine, if the app looks and feels more like it was made for a mouse and keyboard. Force the new way of interacting. I was surprised Apple announced a keyboard for that reason too, though I can see why.

From this beginning Apple can expand.

However, to this topic about File Access - I don't agree with the per-app filesystem. It works brilliantly for a very small number of files, but doesn't scale and can lead to inter-app access issues. I think Apple could do better.

Oops. You're right.

I suspect that you play the role that I often do: "tech translator." I don't think there are many people who do this well, which is why I do some of it on a consulting basis, in addition to at my regular workplace and among friends.

You start by recognizing the pretty normal ways people relate to technology, assure them that they're inability to do something is not a sign of stupidity, then seek commonsensical ways to convey techniques.

People can't learn well when they're stressed and feel belittled. Snapping out gobbets of tech talk, impatiently pushing them aside, or sighing heavily and beginning to talks as if to a child, which are standard IT techniques, just makes people ever more resistant to ever learning that stuff. Most people might not even be able to tell you the roots of their anxiety and unhappiness around computers, but almost everyone has had the experience of being more or less bullied by "a tech guy." If I wanted to, I could actually make a fair bit of money just by being a guy who knows something about this stuff who isn't a total asshole.

That's certainly possible, and I hope it'll work that way - we just don't know for sure yet.

It's also possible that importing photos using the SD card adaptor will just put them in an "import roll", much as the iPhone takes pictures into a "camera roll". This import roll then syncs back to the computer which organises everything into events, faces, places.

iirc, Steve said that photos would import correctly from Macs or PCs - but that IF photos were synced from a Mac instead of PC, then you'd have access to events, places, and faces. This implies those are not something done on the iPad itself... but again we don't really know the details.

A colleague has asked me to help her get an iPad to use as her only computer. I think it will be quite possible, and generally it looks like a great match to her needs, but there are many questions that haven't been answered.

This sounds fine for the iPad, but if it suggests the direction Apple might take with the Mac, it worries me a lot. We can already see this direction in iPhoto, as people have pointed out (I know how to open the package and get at my files, but I remember saying "wtf" when iPhoto started putting its files into a package), and in iMovie, which a couple versions ago started creating a "media library" where all your source files from all projects are stored together in a central location. That makes NO SENSE in my client-based work.

Good one!

I have to take issue with the technically savvy bit. I am very technically savvy and this device sounds ideal for me. The way I see it this is a media consumption device (which can also be used for limited content creation) for absolutely everyone except those that can only work on devices that require the user to be technically savvy. I have other machines but i can see the iPad getting some heavy use around my pad. Perfect for checking out AI!

A bit off-topic, as already suggested, but what is broken about Quicktime?

QT X can't display QTVR panoramas, for one...

QT X is a Movie Player ONLY, that's why they have "Quicktime Player" still, to fulfill all those other things.

Steve said as much when he debuted it in Snow Leopard.

QT X is only intended as a lightweight, redesigned player without all the cruft that full-blown Quicktime brings to the table (which 95% of users don't need).

That's what's now confusing about QTVR. Panoramas are still .mov files. They don't need any editing, just playing. Yet you have to keep QT 7 to play them.

Okay, so what you are now saying is Quicktime isn't broken. File extension confusion is the problem.

QT X, whilst for playing, is only for playing Video and Music. For everything else there is QT 7. Maybe a little more intelligence is needed at the OS level to handle panoramic .MOV files.

The handling of a MOV file is determined by the OS, so it's probably more of a Mac OS X issue, as MOVs aren't exclusively Mac OS X.

You're right that I probably was being a bit harsh, and I don't doubt that you handled the situation very well. My point was intended to be rather more general - the amount of times I've witnessed tech guys being total arseholes to people, belittling them for not understanding this, that or the other, is worrying. I must admit it tends to be better on the Mac side of things - PC guys seem to be the worst.

A couple of years ago I oversaw the transition of a company from PC to Mac and had to work with the new contracted Mac support guys as well as the old PC support guys. I had to physically intervene at one point, when a PC guy was asking this woman the same question over and over again when she clearly didn't understand, and she wound up in tears.


As for Desktop OS X going down the route of no files and folders - I really don't see that happening. You're likely to see applications abstract things from the user, but the OS shouldn't really be doing this too much. The iPhoto way of storing stuff in a package is a good example of this. Most people don't care where their photos are stored. Expecting the average user to keep track of this is unrealistic. If you're tech savvy, you'll be able to understand and use the package bundle fine, so it's not a problem. If it really is a problem, don't use iPhoto.

By no means. QTVR is perfectly playing within QT 7, it is playing in Safari. OS support is in place. It's just QT X, which can't play such files anymore. The functionality has been dropped.