That justification seems rather weak by that some operations don't work on some files. Of course not all operations work on all types of files. It feels as if

That justification seems rather weak by that some operations don't work on some files. Of course not all operations work on all types of files. It feels as if they think that one type of “file”, as in the file that is a block of storage, is the “true file”, and the others are “fake files”, whereas the file that maps to a block of storage is no more or less an abstraction than a file that maps to a some segment of a process' memory or a hardware driver. Would it be different of Unix files were instead named “vectors” as a more abstract name and that some vectors mape to what others might call a “file”, id est a block of storage.