Apple, Microsoft and the filesystem

Something of a dividing line seems to have been drawn recently by Microsoft and Apple although I have not heard anyone mention it as yet.  The two companies have come down on opposite sides of a philosophical argument about the future of computing.  The topic in question – the filesystem.

By this I don’t mean NTFS vs HFS+, I mean the question of whether the user should be aware of the filesystem at all?

In the recent WWDC11 keynote presentation, Steve Jobs placed Apple’s flag in the sand when he said, and I paraphrase, that Apple had been working for years to get rid of the filesystem.  In the future, we should expect to access our files from the App which pertains to that file type.  The physical location of the file is not really relevant – indeed one should expunge such thoughts from the mind.

This approach can be seen in the way that programs such as iPhoto and Aperture attempt to prevent the user from interacting directly with the photos stored on their computer; they should instead be accessed only via the application itself.

Conversely, in a recent video about the forthcoming Windows 8, Microsoft specifically said, “Because it’s a PC, it has a filesystem.”  They continue to allow, nay encourage us, to use the filesystem but seem also to be working on making it easier to access files wherever they reside on the system.

In the WWDC keynote, Steve Jobs talked about the learning curve of a filesystem and how new users find it very hard to understand.  My own parents were quite happy working with MS-DOS and command line interfaces, while children get on and use whatever is placed before them, seemingly without effort of any description, so I’m left to wonder who exactly finds the file system so incomprehensible?

Of course, Apple can’t magically do away with the need for their devices to have an underlying filesystem.  It’s just that they don’t want the user to be aware of or have access to it.

But if I can’t see my files on the disk, how do I move them between my devices?  Enter iCloud, Apple’s exceedingly slick looking service which is intended to store all the documents you create and send them to all your other devices without any user intervention.

This is great if you live in a location where high speed internet access is pervasive.  However, what about third world countries, or indeed rural England where such luxuries do not exist?  One could of course argue that many people in the Third World cannot afford Apple products (nor can many in the First World for that matter) but that detracts from the central point about Apple’s medium term goal to do away with the filesystem.

Personally my preference is for the Microsoft approach.  I’m all for easy access to files from within applications, and indeed for seamless synching between devices, but at the end of the day, my files are my files and I want access to them at an operating system level.  I am not a fan of kiosk computing where the user is banished from seeing the beating heart of his machine.

Of course I’m not a computing visionary, I’m just someone arguing for the status quo.  However, by reducing computing to the lowest common denominator of user competence, Apple are in effect leaving behind the people who made them successful in the first place.  Their first ever computer let’s not forget was a self assembly kit!

I guess this is to be expected though; in 2007 they changed their name from Apple Computer Inc. to Apple Inc. signaling that computers are no longer their main focus.  They are now a consumer electronics company with a big finger in the music/media pie.  Indeed the Mac now accounts for only about 1/3 of their revenue.

They will no doubt continue to produce devices of beguiling slickness and shininess which do the things most people want to do with minimum fuss.  However for anyone with a genuine interest in computing itself I won’t be surprised if before the decade is out, Apple are products are as relevant as a Sony Walkman or a DVD player.