Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm sure people who know more than me will give me a list of great reasons why it's not straightforward to implement... Nah, Android phones have done this forever, it's not technical difficulties stopping it from working. It's The Apple Way . They don't want you using your phone that way, or something.
> Nah, Android phones have done this forever Your only option today is MTP on Android, and it stinks. At one time, Android did support showing up as a mass storage device. I know when I first got a G1, then the phone I had after that - both you could plug in, and they appeared as a mass storage device. Just like a USB thumb drive. I don't recall if you could use the file system at the same time on both sides; I doubt…
I bet it was simply to prevent having to implement FAT32 or some feature related to FAT and pay royalties to MS for that, like long filename support or similar.