There is one aspect that everybody here seems to be ignoring. Files can span boundaries of time, space, connectivity, bandwidth, and trust. They also span bound

There is one aspect that everybody here seems to be ignoring. Files can span boundaries of time, space, connectivity, bandwidth, and trust. They also span boundaries of architecture--CPU and OS. I have files "in the cloud" that were born on systems that haven't been manufactured since before Google existed. Those files are self-contained units that I control and can move to whatever system I desire. And, although people here say that end-users just don't know how to use files, I have relatives who are over 85 years old who still manage to attach photos--and Powerpoint presentations, for some reason--to emails and share them. Saying that we only need an API is saying that it's okay for the data to die when the manufacture goes out of business, or decides that it's time to shut down the DRM servers, or you just lose your phone. Files are reifications of data that allow us to separate some concerns. Transporting and backing-up files are orthogonal to the data that is in the files. We can compress and email and FTP any kind of data whatsoever. That's not an insignificant thing.