Apple's Files App is an admission of imperfection

When Apple introduced the iPhone, they introduced not just a smart phone but a new approach to computing. The iPhone experience was a new, simpler experience for the user. The iPhone (and iOS) did away with much of the administrative work of PCs. It eliminated the notion of user accounts and administrator accounts. Updates were automatic and painless. Apps knew how to get their data. The phone "just worked".

The need for a Files app is an admission that the iPad experience does not meet those expectations. It raises the hood and allows the user to meddle with some of the innards of the iPhone. One explanation for its existence is that Apps cannot always find the needed files, and the Files App lets you (the user) find those files.

Does anyone see the irony in making the user do the work that the computer should do? Especially a computer from Apple?

To be fair, Android has had File Manager apps for years, so the Android experience does not meet those expectations either. Microsoft's Surface tablets, starting with the first one, have had Windows Explorer built in, so they are failing to provide the new, simpler experience too.

A curmudgeon might declare that the introduction of the Files App shows that even Apple cannot provide the desired user experience, and if Apple can't do it then no one can.

I'm not willing to go that far.

I will say that the original vision of a simple, easy-to-use, reliable computing device still holds. It may be that the major players have not delivered on that vision, but that doesn't mean the vision is unobtainable.

It may be that the iPhone (and Android) are steps in a larger process, one starting with the build-it-yourself microcomputers of the mid 1970s, passing through IBM PCs with DOS and later PC-compatibles with Windows, and currently with iPhones and tablets. Perhaps we will see a new concept in personal computing, one that improves upon the iPhone experience. It may be as different from iPhone and Android as those operating systems are from Windows and MacOS. It may be part of the "internet of things" and expand personal computing to household appliances.

I'm looking forward to it.