Computer Files Are Going Extinct
The article just felt...unjustifiably alarmist to me.<p>Most non-technical people I know <i>cannot manage files</i> even after decades of computing experience. I understand why many services try to abstract or simplify the concept.<p>For example, Google or Apple is processing the crap out of your email attachment image because they know you don’t understand the idea that trying to send five 10MB photos likely will not fit in an email. All you want to do is send your photos to Grandma. So instead your iDevice handles it for you and either compresses them or throws them in a temporary cloud storage location with a link. Grandma gets her photos - for most people the alternative is a confusing mail delivery bounce followed by frustration.<p>Apple added Stacks to the desktop because everyone’s tired of seeing other people’s computers with a mess of icons smashed together on the desktop, because that’s the only place files could be conceivably stored in the mind of a non-technical user. The whole idea of a file hierarchy seems either too confusing or too labor intensive to that type of user.<p>Nerds like us always have and had options. We are aware and capable of coming up with a more friendly solution to us, like a home built NAS or Synology box; ask a non-technical user what those are and be met with a blank stare.<p>For most people, they really should be paying someone else to maintain their data, iCloud, Google or whatever. Nobody’s home back up scheme can match what these companies are doing in their data centers. And no, these services don’t just delete your data immediately after your monthly payment method bounces - you are given time and nags to download your data or renew, often your data just becomes download-only.<p>Are we annoyed that most options are not for us, or have to be in a form of a workaround to a technology stack that’s marketed to non-technical people? Maybe. It would be wonderful if there was a device as nice as an iPad that also gave us full access like a Linux PC.<p>But also, nobody’s forcing us in 2019 to stop using our files as we did in 1999. We didn’t <i>have</i> all these services back then. File management was <i>the</i> option. It is still an option.<p>And in 2019, Apple finally adds mass storage support to the iPad. Sometimes things come around.