On Mac OS and the filesystem

I mentioned this on episode 10 of the Cidercast, and it’s something I’ve wanted to talk further about for a while.

Not having a filesystem on the iPhone and iPad makes sense; it would just complicate a deliberately simplified operating system. But it’s well held that Mac and iOS are different kettles of fish, and this is true, for now. It’s also true that if Macs were to ever rid themselves of the filesystem, there would be a backlash – a huge one, but because of the complexity of a system that can do everything, completely destroying the filesystem isn’t really an option. That doesn’t mean it can’t be pulled from the focus, or pushed into the background. Apple has made it clear that after successive OS X versions, they are not interested in fixing finder.app to bring it up to par Microsoft’s explorer (not visually, and possibly not with what Microsoft have planned for explorer in Windows 8). What they did change in the latest few OS upgrades, never really showed much faith in a filesystem either:

  1. Cover Flow favoured a visual approach (like iOS) over the hierarchies and folders of a filesystem (but was merely a gimmick that no-one uses)
  2. All My Files completely destroys any concept of a filesystem, instead the user relies on sorting options to find the file.
  3. Updated and much improved search. Given that search is faster than folders in email, it goes to show that search is an effect alternative to a filesystem.
  4. Launchpad is iOS (or, more specifically, it is the iOS Springboard app), but Springboard is the closest thing iOS has to a filesystem.

All of these are eroding the filesystem in Mac OS, or at least priming us for a quasi filesystem-less experience.

I have a theory as to how they might unify the experience: by severely diminishing the role of a filesystem. Finder.app will become an app in Utilities that you have to open to gain a full filesystem experience. Files will be sorted - smartly - by the Operating System into appropriate places (relative to the app of choice). Opening files will be subject to the app you wish to open them in, and the sandboxing of OS X Lion will be improved to cater for the need to possibly share files too and from other apps; like in iOS, you would open the app before the file, not there reverse.

I’m not sure what Apple will do with the desktop, and how they will integrate a generic downloads location. Perhaps, a Downloads.app could be created that merely collates files that have been downloaded from the internet (or indeed, some sort of implementation with All My Files.

I believe Apple will want to make Launchpad the desktop. This will make sense, as the desktop will have little use anymore. My idea of how Apple will keep and employ All My Files, is to integrate it with Launchpad. The concept, is similar to the search feature on an iOS device (to the left of the first Springboard homepage). In the Launchpad integration, again, go to left of the Launchpad.app first homepage and there will be an implementation of All My Files together with a search method of sorts. This would be all the control of files the average person would need. Terribly shop’d concept pictures of what I mean are here, and here.

The main problem I can foresee, is with external drives. How can you correlate a filesystem of a Flash drive, with the app-driven iOS system? Simply shuffling the user off to the aforementioned Finder.app (relegated to the utilities folder) would be jarring to a user unfamiliar with a filesystem. I suspect the best thing to do would be an app that integrates with the external source. But how could you effectively transfer files to the Mac? Well, similarly to how files are opened in the app rather than from a filesystem, this hypothetical app for OS integration with an external filesystem-based external drive would send the files to the default app that opens them. If the user doesn’t want the file sent to the default app, they can send it to which ever app they want. The UI for this could be confusing, but it would still be possible to implement effectively.

Given all this, it would be a giant shock to the system of your average hard-core mac user, but I doubt it will be from the Average user (especially if they came from an iOS device). A filesystem-less desktop OS could work; everything runs like in iOS (with the addition of an All My Files GUI), but with an optional, hidden (or at least out of the focus) finder.app for when you definitely do need access to the files and folder system.