Is iPhone still abstracting files away into some kind of seamless data experience for the end user or does is finally understand what files are for?
There's a files app
Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10
341–350 of 585 posts
Re: Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10
#342Incredible! In an astounding feat, it has only taken a mere two decades to enable the world's largest tech companies to provide the most basic levels of interopability.
At this breakneck speed of technological development, one can only imagine what wonderful boons await consumers in the next few decades.
Re: Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
Waayy back in 2009 we had Bump [1], which allowed transfer between devices and later web apps as well – by banging your phone against the spacebar. It worked 98% of the time and was faster than AirDrop is today, even though we only had 3G. Google acquired it and immediately killed it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bump_(application)
Waaay back when in Japan, sekigaisen (infrared) was a verb meaning to transfer contact details or photos or whatever between phones via infrared. It was amazing how fast the iPhone took over Japan and killed off their quirky phone ecosystem. Edit: want to emphasize that it was totally ubiquitous. Every phone has it
In the US (edit: and elsewhere!), "beaming" worked great between Apple Newton devices, including the pretty cool eMate 300 (an early Jony Ive creation, I just found on Wikipedia).
In 1993.
Re: Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
> big tech That's why. TCP/IP was DARPA, so publicly (taxpayer) funded. The first HTTPd was public domain. WiFi was a bit of a combo of Vic Hayes & Bell Labs, IEEE and a research org so not exactly a public or public domain project. Big tech and profit/rent seeking is literally the problem. Things don't interoperate because it's not profitable for them to interoperate. We stopped undertaking large public works projec…
So does this constitute an example that the liberal ideal of companies competing for the best product -with no or minimal amount of public money forced to go this way for public development- ends up becoming basically a miserable and lacking experience for end users during decades? (admittedly it sounds to me like if private companies had invented TCP-IP, the consequences would basically be terrible connectivity prod…
I don't necessarily think so. It doesn't have to be this way. The problem is big tech doesn't have any incentive to compete to make the best product because there's no market pressure to do so.
We've failed, over the past ~25+ years to do any meaningful trust busting and allowed monopolies and duopolies to abuse their market positions and destroy any potential competitors.
Re: Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was experimenting with this technology almost a decade ago as part of my work as interaction designer: https://darker.ink/writings/Mobile-design-with-device-to-dev... It has a lot of potential but unfortunately it has been kept back until now by lack of support and interoperability.
Waayy back in 2009 we had Bump [1], which allowed transfer between devices and later web apps as well – by banging your phone against the spacebar. It worked 98% of the time and was faster than AirDrop is today, even though we only had 3G. Google acquired it and immediately killed it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bump_(application)
When I was pretty early in my career, I inherited a legacy project from the CTO who didn't want to maintain it anymore. We decided as a team that I'd just recreate the project with a modern tool chain.
A few weeks later, the CTO looked at my work and asked why it was missing xyz features from his legacy project, saying that if I'm gonna take a project and rewrite it, it better be at least as good as the old project.
It was a pretty good lesson for me to get early in my career, and I've carried it with me ever since. Don't break or rewrite that which already works.
It's evident that no one at Google ever got that lesson.
NB: I know Google definitely has other reasons for acquiring and killing off Bump — they were probably building a competing technology that was shitty and bump was doing it better and sooner than them so better to buy and kill than to make their own product better. But I think my the lesson from my anecdote still stands from a purely product point of view, and I feel like it should make business sense but apparently you can make bad micro business decisions as long as you can convince shareholders they were good macro business decisions.
Re: Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that pretty much just Windows? That basically never occurs on Linux and it's not common on macOS, either. All the garbage I have on my work computer (a Mac) in ~/Documents is stuff that OneDrive synced over from when I used to have a Windows computer there. (If I could turn the OneDrive feature that takes over ~/Documents and ~/Downloads, I would.)
Linux software is notorious for spewing crap all over the user's home directory. Delete everything inside your /home/name and see how well the system still works. On iOS/iPadOS nothing happens other than not having the documents you saved in there. I'm not sure there even is a good place where programs can store their internal system files without requiring root other than mixed in with the user Home.
Yes and no. Some older conventions for dotfiles are a bit messy in that they're not necessarily contained under top-level directories like ~/.config or ~/.local, but the hijacking of non-hidden directories for contents unrelated to their purposes, like using ~/Documents for game saves, is basically unheard of (except for some ports of Windows games that retain this bad habit).
> On iOS/iPadOS nothing happens other than not having the documents you saved in there.
That is, frankly, a ridiculous test for the issue under discussion. Even if everything was stored under a top-level subdirectory set aside for application data in a perfectly orderly way, nuking $HOME would still break things.
Besides all that, hidden directories in the root of ~ are conventional¹ places to store application config files and so on, and can't be mistaken for conventional places to store documents. On most Linux-based operating systems, the conventional place to store documents is (obviously) ~/Documents, which is created ahead of time for all users. That folder doesn't generally end up polluted with things that aren't documents.
> On iOS/iPadOS nothing happens other than not having the documents you saved in there.
If you delete /var/mobile or any of the things that $HOME points to in the context of some app, you'll definitely lose app settings.
The app sandboxing on iOS does something nice by sort of forcing app configuration data to live within conventional directories, but none of that is captured in the "what if you delete ~" test. (The fact that $HOME isn't really directly exposed to the user sort of does; the local files you're comparing to $HOME on Linux are actually $HOME/Media on iOS.)
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1: https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/FHS_3.0/fhs/ch03s08.htm...
Re: Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
MacOS doesn’t have a gatekeeper status in the Digital Markets Act (DMA), so Apple doesn’t need to provide it. This shows that they only provide the SDK because of regulatory pressure, and try to maintain their vendor lock-in where possible.
Look, you might be right. But you might be wrong. We don't know for sure. One of my first jobs was in infosec, and there was a sign above one of the senior consultant's door quoting Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". That quote is right. There's so much going on at any medium-to-large organisation, from engineering to politics and personalities. All that multi…
Your reply makes sense in a vacuum, but in reality we have the context of having seen Apple comply with regulation maliciously before, so we do know for sure that there's no macOS in the sdk because they weren't forced to by regulation.
Re: Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
How long until Apple disables it outside of the EU?
They won't, they'll just do another Green-Bubble/Blue-Bubble shenanigan to signal when Apple royalty is transferring a file with an unwashed Android peasant via a gimped experience.
There's teams of people having meetings about how they can degrade people's experience right now.
Re: Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10
#349The fact that I get excited about this is actually a good representation much vendor lock there is. We used to be able to send files over Bluetooth before the iPhone came out.
i am still sending files over bluetooth between android phones or between phones and computer
Re: Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
One reason I'll never own an apple device, and prefer buying more expensive more open competition. Its just a red line - I own the device by law, if you bend backwards to prevent me from using it via ways that it supports by principle, your product doesn't exist for me.
You are not Apple's target audience, and there is nothing wrong with that.
The problem is that because fleecing dummies is so profitable, it encourages the same scummy behavior by other companies.