Bye Bye File System

I don’t want to deal with files and directories anymore.

A few weeks ago I bought IA Writer for Mac (thanks Stephan!) — the most basic text editor one could imagine. Its goal is to facilitate distraction-free writing. Before being turned into a Mac app, it was a successful application on the iPad.

As you are likely aware, iOS apps don’t expose file systems. When you open an app like IA Writer you can immediately start typing, either in a previously created document or a new one. As a user you don’t have to deal with directories or file names, meaning you don’t have to make two choices:

  1. What am I going to call my document?
  2. Where am I going to put it?

You may think it’s silly, but those two choices seem to considerably reduce my “barrier to entry” when it comes to creating a new document. When I want to create a new document I don’t care what it’s called or where it’s stored, I just want to enter content.

As it turns out, IA Writer for Mac does not mirror this paradigm. I can start typing immediately, but it doesn’t save content automatically and to save it… you guessed it: you have to choose a file name and location to store it. I have found this really reduced my pleasure of using IA writer — it’s not purely about content anymore, I also have to worry about keeping things tidy. Is this file name descriptive enough? Can I really store this in my Documents directory, won’t that pollute it? Stuff I really don’t want to be bothered anymore. I’ve been spoiled. The same thing goes for other applications too: Keynote, Eclipse, graphic editors. The file system is a pain.

It’s not just mobile where the file system has disappeared. The web has largely got rid of it. Google Docs don’t have file names or directory names. Neither do Gmail or calendar. Files and directories are a major distraction.

As far as I’m concerned, the file system is dead. If I’m looking for something, I’ll open an app and search for it. Get those directories and files out of my face.

(This was written in a unsaved IA Writer file.)

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 19th, 2011 at 17:36 by Zef You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

  • Qwerty

    Of course, just because it is hidden from you doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist anymore.

    This is my first and last post I read from you.

  • Tony Sloane

    For simple tasks, I agree that the file system is redundant and having an app focus is nice. However, what about projects that consist of multiple pieces each handled by different apps?  E.g., a book project that has a textual component and some images. The apps to handle these different files could be different. Without some sort of inter-app structure, such as folders or directories, the grouping will be lost.

  • http://profiles.google.com/fuzzycat Andy Powell

    Yes, let’s dumb down ‘saving a file’ like we have with everything else. 

  • http://twitter.com/smartmessages Smartmessages Email

    Tagging can simulate most of the things you do with folders – it’s how gmail emulates folders. As far as images go, filenames are mostly an annoying irrelevance nowadays – once they’re in your management app you don’t care about them. Apple’s Newton (way back in 1993) was entirely file-system free; all data was available to all apps via a common object store (a ‘soup’), in a way that was generally more flexible than the very limited inter-app data sharing possible on iOS now. (bah, auth’d with wrong twitter id!)

  • Tony Sloane

    Tags can certainly help organise things, but only if all of your apps support them.  E.g., you need operations such as email all of the documents with tag “my project”. In effect, you’ve got some tag-based file system underneath your apps.

  • http://zef.me Zef Hemel

    See here, for a somewhat rephrased version of this idea: http://www.stateofcode.com/2011/06/save-dialogs-considered-distracting/

  • http://twitter.com/OhMeadhbh mʲeːv aːmɾʲk

    hey zef, have you ever looked at a canon cat? it was an “information appliance” produced by jef raskin (macintosh, humane interface, &c) i still have mine and actually use it for exactly the reason you’re discussing here. you turn it on and start typing. if there’s a disk in the disk drive when you turn it on, it loads the contents of the disk before letting you type.

    dirt simple.

    i kinda wish google docs was a bit more like that.

  • Michael

    funny world we live in … people buying devices that hide much of their functionality – then expect people to buy apps to expose what is already there!

    yes .. an iphone is a toy until its jailbroken (and lots of other devices too , not only apple ones).. It is only then you are free from the hassles of crippled sync apps swiping your contacts whenever work changes something on their email server .. and only then can you  easily use those handy time-saving scripts you wrote without having to buy an expensive new mac and pay appstore fees just for a chance you might be allowed to use them on your phone…  (btw iOS DOES have a file system – bsd/unix-like just like OSX) … seen those ads going on about how many apps are out there for their platform? .. imaging how many more there would be if they would  open up and stop making it difficult for developers! ..

    ever wondered why its so hard to find USEFUL apps in appstores? .. . … – that’s what happens when there is a barrier to entry that keeps people with ideas out!

    bye bye walled garden is what I’d rather see!