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This may make sense for sensitive data, but it's a massive attack on independent media players. Can't write, edit, or move files. No downloads. No music sync.
by radley 13y ago
This may make sense for sensitive data, but it's a massive attack on independent media players.
Can't write, edit, or move files. No downloads. No music sync. No file renaming. No editing of mp3 metadata.
Only walled gardens allowed on the new Android "open" platform.
- bryanlarsen 13y agoFile managers may be out, but photo apps might be OK: they just need to somehow request full access to /DCIM through this new API (which I have not looked at). music & video players may be more awkward but possibly doable.
- wslh 13y agoSo moving from Android to iOS will be less painful in the near future. I think traversing the whole filesystem and adding a big SD Card are key features in Android devices. If Apple launches a device with a bigger display they will eat part of the Android ecosystem.
- stock_toaster 13y agoor if/when amazon releases a phone based on their android fork..
- wslh 13y agoAt the end I would prefer to run a full desktop operating system with a mobile UI in the device.
- matt_heimer 13y agoSure they can, just not the MP3s that belong to another application. Each application can put its own private data on the external storage. Most of the people here don't get how scary external storage was with Android. Every time you install an app with the android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission you have to worry about what it will do to every other applications data. Some apps (like file managers) need this but letting every app that wants to write data to external storage have the ability to trash every other apps data is just crazy. The private app directories on external storage is a MUCH better approach. And if you want to install apps that can trash other apps then I'm okay with needing root for that.
- andrewfong 13y agoSuppose I was previously using Media Player X and decide to try new Media Player Y. How does Media Player Y access the MP3s that were previously accessible to X? Likewise, if I uninstall X, will my MP3s disappear? As far as user expectations go, MP3s, videos, word docs, and a whole slew of other file formats don't and shouldn't really belong to any application.
- tadfisher 13y agoThe person you responded to neglected to mention Android's MediaStore provider, which can store common media in various standard directories on the SD card (like /DCIM and /Music), which has been the standard storage mechanism for media since 1.0 and is still available in Kit Kat.
- radley 13y agoMediaStore is a database, not a file system. It doesn't move, write, or "store" files. It just reads: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/provider/MediaStore.html http://developer.android.com/reference/android/provider/Medi...
- fidotron 13y agoHow naive you are! MediaStore is actually an unholy hybrid of database and filesystem. If you assume the data is entirely in one or the other (I mean, you didn't expect it to be consistent with itself, did you?) your code will break in different ways on different devices, since for some reason it's a favourite area of the manufacturers to play with.
- tadfisher 13y agoNo, it is a ContentProvider with a database-like API to which you have linked. The various system DocumentsProvider instances read and write to this provider. This is also the standard API you access through ContentResolver, and this is still present in Kit Kat.
- 13y ago