As far as I've seen, you've always had to know enough to manually configure the network settings and then configure file sharing to work on top of that. Which

As far as I've seen, you've always had to know enough to manually configure the network settings and then configure file sharing to work on top of that. Which us why you need those user facing features like Airdrop or Target Disk mode to automatically handle the networking and file sharing details for the unsophisticated users. Airdrop will continue to work even if there are no existing cellular or WiFi networks available. The devices will just create their own ad hoc WiFi network on the fly, without the user needing to know a thing about how it works.