4 ms·

Filesystems are NOT on the way out. User-visible filesystems are. iOS has file systems. iCloud will still store the files as files on your Mac/PC. The point is

Filesystems are NOT on the way out. User-visible filesystems are. iOS has file systems. iCloud will still store the files as files on your Mac/PC. The point is to reduce complexity for the end user. Think about Google Docs for a minute. I don't know if they are storing all my docs in a database or in a filesystem and it doesn't matter. I can still get to them right? When I download them on my Mac, they are on a filesystem that I can see. End users (think parents, grandparents, etc.) should not have sysadmin their own machines. Removing the whole user visible filesystem is a step in that direction. Google gets this, Apple gets this, nerds don't. People pay for convenience, not features. Dropping the user visible filesystem is convenient for the majority and that will make Apple money.

grannyg00se 15y ago
How can you eliminate even user-visible filesystems? At some point you're going to have different types of data and you're going to want to organize it in some way. I don't want my tax spreadsheets in the same grouping as my music files. I want them in some kind of separate container. No matter how much GUI you throw at this, that separate container is a file system that is visible to me.
- wisty 15y ago
  Tagging is often better than hierarchies. You can organize by project (i.e. office fitout, web server upgrade) and other categories (i.e. budget related, list of people involved, plans) to make things easier to find when you switch contexts. Want to look at a single project, or all the budgets for the year?
  - sid0 15y ago
    Isn't that what Microsoft tried to do with Longhorn, and failed miserably at?
    - programminggeek 15y ago
      Microsoft tried to make the filesystem a database, as in, the filesystem was literally SQL Server or something. It didn't work. That is a completely different concept than simply changing the user-visible filesystem abstraction.
      - lukeschlather 15y ago
        How would you make a tag-based filesystem without a database that wasn't literally SQL server or something?
      - wisty 15y ago
        I don't think it was really SQL Server. They could have made that work. I think it was more like they heard the XML buzz (this was some time ago), and tried to make a proprietary binary version of whatever it was XML was promising.
- gnaritas 15y ago
  > I don't want my tax spreadsheets in the same grouping as my music files. I want them in some kind of separate container. That's file centric thinking. Most normal people don't think about files, they think about apps and the data that's in them. iTunes holds my music, Word holds my documents, Excel has my spreedsheets; that's how people think when they don't grok files.

grannyg00se 15y ago

How can you eliminate even user-visible filesystems? At some point you're going to have different types of data and you're going to want to organize it in some way. I don't want my tax spreadsheets in the same grouping as my music files. I want them in some kind of separate container. No matter how much GUI you throw at this, that separate container is a file system that is visible to me.

wisty 15y ago
Tagging is often better than hierarchies. You can organize by project (i.e. office fitout, web server upgrade) and other categories (i.e. budget related, list of people involved, plans) to make things easier to find when you switch contexts. Want to look at a single project, or all the budgets for the year?
- sid0 15y ago
  Isn't that what Microsoft tried to do with Longhorn, and failed miserably at?
  - programminggeek 15y ago
    Microsoft tried to make the filesystem a database, as in, the filesystem was literally SQL Server or something. It didn't work. That is a completely different concept than simply changing the user-visible filesystem abstraction.
    - lukeschlather 15y ago
      How would you make a tag-based filesystem without a database that wasn't literally SQL server or something?
    - wisty 15y ago
      I don't think it was really SQL Server. They could have made that work. I think it was more like they heard the XML buzz (this was some time ago), and tried to make a proprietary binary version of whatever it was XML was promising.
gnaritas 15y ago
> I don't want my tax spreadsheets in the same grouping as my music files. I want them in some kind of separate container. That's file centric thinking. Most normal people don't think about files, they think about apps and the data that's in them. iTunes holds my music, Word holds my documents, Excel has my spreedsheets; that's how people think when they don't grok files.