Life without files

Mobile devices (tablets and phones) are different from PCs in that they do not use files. Yes, they have operating systems that use files, and Android has file managers which let you access some or all files on the device, but the general experience is one without files.

The PC experience was centered around files. Files were the essential element of a PC, from the boot files to word processor documents to temporary data. Everything was stored in a file. The experience of using a PC was running an application, loading data from a file, and manipulating that data. When finished, one saved the information to a file.

Unix (and Linux) also have this approach. Microsoft Windows presented data in a series of graphical windows, but it stored data in files. The "File" menu with its options of "New", "Open", "Save", "Save As", and "Exit" (oddly) were standard in the UI.

The mobile experience relies on apps, not files. The user runs an app, and the app somehow knows how to get its data. Much of the time, that data is stored in the cloud, on servers maintained by the app provider. There is no "File" menu -- or any menu.

Shifting the experience from files to apps is a subtle but significant change. One tends to miss it, since keeping track of files was tedious and required discipline for structuring directories. When apps load their data automatically, one doesn't really mind not worrying about file names and locations.

With the "loss" of files, or more specifically the access to app data outside of the app, one is more conscious of sharing information between apps. In the PC age, one didn't share information between applications -- one stored data in a public place and let other applications have their way with it.

This "data available to all" makes some sense, especially for developers. Developers use multiple tools on their data -- source code -- and need it shared liberally. Editors, compilers, debuggers, lint utilities, and metrics tools all need unfettered access to the source code.

But the "free for all" model does not work so well for other data. In most shops, data is used in a single application (most often Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel) and occasionally sent via e-mail to others. But this latter act is simply sharing the data; a better way to share data could eliminate a lot of e-mails.

Sharing data and allowing others to update it (or not) requires an infrastructure, a mechanism to make data available and control access. It requires data to be structured in a way that it can be shared -- which may be different from the internal format used by the app. Yet defining an external format may be good for us in general: we can eliminate the task of reverse-engineering proprietary file formats.

Life without files. Because we want to get work done, not read and save files.