4 ms·

While frustrating, the SD card situation is very different. With SD cards, the "old way" had serious problems (security and robustness issues because apps coul

by fpgeek 12y ago

While frustrating, the SD card situation is very different. With SD cards, the "old way" had serious problems (security and robustness issues because apps could stomp on each other's data, all sorts of complexity and confusion on multi-user devices, orphaning private app data on the SD card when apps are uninstalled, no sensible backup possibilities for apps that depend on SD card data, apps not knowing whether data would be on internal or external storage because "/sdcard" means different things on different devices, etc.) that Google is trying to solve. Google's solution required a compatibility break, but that doesn't mean they're just dropping all of the SD card use cases. KitKat introduced app-specific private data on external storage, apps can enable some simple sharing by the adding read permissions to their private data, the storage access framework can be used to support more complex structured sharing between and so on. Among other things, Google is even adding a new API in Android L that lets apps properly publish media (images, audio, video, etc.) from their private storage (including private SD card storage, which is when it is most useful) to the shared MediaStore. Is this transition bumpy? Absolutely, especially for people who upgrade their OS or use an old SD card on a new device. Nevertheless, I don't think Google will go back no matter how loud the cries get. Google tried neglecting SD cards from Honeycomb through Jelly Bean (hoping they'd "wither away", I suspect). That failed. Now they have no choice but to do the hard work of putting external storage on a reasonable foundation.

userbinator 12y ago
If the problems were so "serious" I wonder how people ever managed to use external storage on their computers, long before Android even existed...? I think it's really about Google control. They tried to remove SD cards completely and push cloud storage, but since that didn't go over so well, they'll emphasise the "problems" and their attempt at "solving" them by introducing some even more convoluted scheme for access, increasing complexity and furthering their end goal of making it harder to use external storage. The fact is that letting apps access external storage in the form of a full filesystem means that data can flow freely between apps, just like on a regular desktop system you can create a file with one text editor and view it in another, or maybe the webbrowser if you're writing HTML, etc. You can put a negative spin on it with "apps could stomp on each other's data" or invoke the argument of "security" (which is already a solved problem: use a filesystem that supports permissions, like *nix always had), but there's no denying that it provides for seamless interoperability and sharing without any additional effort. It allows for the same level of flexibility that you would expect a general-purpose computer to have. For example, I could plug in an SD card from a digital camera, open a file in one app to edit it, and then attach it to an email in another app, upload it to a cloud storage, etc. There's no additional "publish" or "import" steps required, only a way to choose the desired files in the filesystem to work on. Ditto for any other type of file, be it video, audio, text, etc. Many people are now essentially carrying computers in their pockets which are orders of magnitude more powerful than desktop systems several decades ago, and yet what they can do with them is a shrinking subset of the functionality and generality those had. I think this is a massive step backwards.
fragmede 12y ago
> While frustrating, the SD card situation is very different. Not really - ordinary users lost access to features they were using but power users still had access, albeit locked behind a terminal screen. The only additional step on Android is you have to jump through whatever hoops was required for your device to get root, while Chromebooks have a 'get root' mechanism baked-in. In both cases, Google's devs in certain departments aren't being pushed hard enough to put away the ping-pong paddles and stop playing foos-ball long enough to write some difficult code with a UI that has more than 3 steps. (Thanks Apple for dumbing everything down.)

by fpgeek 12y ago

userbinator 12y ago

If the problems were so "serious" I wonder how people ever managed to use external storage on their computers, long before Android even existed...? I think it's really about Google control. They tried to remove SD cards completely and push cloud storage, but since that didn't go over so well, they'll emphasise the "problems" and their attempt at "solving" them by introducing some even more convoluted scheme for access, increasing complexity and furthering their end goal of making it harder to use external storage. The fact is that letting apps access external storage in the form of a full filesystem means that data can flow freely between apps, just like on a regular desktop system you can create a file with one text editor and view it in another, or maybe the webbrowser if you're writing HTML, etc. You can put a negative spin on it with "apps could stomp on each other's data" or invoke the argument of "security" (which is already a solved problem: use a filesystem that supports permissions, like *nix always had), but there's no denying that it provides for seamless interoperability and sharing without any additional effort. It allows for the same level of flexibility that you would expect a general-purpose computer to have. For example, I could plug in an SD card from a digital camera, open a file in one app to edit it, and then attach it to an email in another app, upload it to a cloud storage, etc. There's no additional "publish" or "import" steps required, only a way to choose the desired files in the filesystem to work on. Ditto for any other type of file, be it video, audio, text, etc. Many people are now essentially carrying computers in their pockets which are orders of magnitude more powerful than desktop systems several decades ago, and yet what they can do with them is a shrinking subset of the functionality and generality those had. I think this is a massive step backwards.

fragmede 12y ago

> While frustrating, the SD card situation is very different. Not really - ordinary users lost access to features they were using but power users still had access, albeit locked behind a terminal screen. The only additional step on Android is you have to jump through whatever hoops was required for your device to get root, while Chromebooks have a 'get root' mechanism baked-in. In both cases, Google's devs in certain departments aren't being pushed hard enough to put away the ping-pong paddles and stop playing foos-ball long enough to write some difficult code with a UI that has more than 3 steps. (Thanks Apple for dumbing everything down.)