I’ll admit I’ve only skimmed the recent “is iPadOS holding the iPad back?” posts from Federico Viticci, Jason Snell, John Gruber, and others. The iPad isn’t part of my routine now that I’m back to using the Kindle for e-books.
Apple has had a decades-long battle with window management generally and the Finder specifically. At Ease, Simple Finder, Launchpad, Stage Manager, iOS Files… But it turns out the Finder is great. You could go a long way just by replacing Files with a touch-optimized Finder.
I wrote the above and then went back to Federico’s post, where he actually highlights this same point:
After seven years, I’m starting to wonder if maybe it’s time for Apple to scrap the Files project and start over with a new app based on the strong foundation of Finder. We’re well past the point of excusing the Files app for being a young file manager; when you’re spending $3,000 on a high-end iPad Pro with plenty of storage, you want the app to manage that storage to be flawless.
Apple could do this even without turning iPadOS into a true fork of iOS. Boot the iPad into a new Finder that mostly obsoletes Springboard and Files.
Numeric Citizen I just published On Operating System Principles & Fundamentals vs iPadOS Limitations & Wishes... I'm not pointing at you... but I think you might find this a-propos.
Denny Henke @numericcitizen I'd say a big no to your main proposition. When was the last time you used Files on an iPad? Files has come a long way since 2019! I did a side-by-side comparison of Finder and Files in iPadOS 16 and visually they are very close. And in terms of function, too, they are now very similar.
I'm a heavy user of the app with 100+ folders and several thousand files. iCloud, local storage, GoogleDrive, OneDrive, Dropbox are all nicely integreted into the sidebar along with various FTP and WebDav accounts and my local network Mac and it's attached hard drives.
This is not to say it's perfect. It's not. It can improved in terms of stability, better indexing of content and a more customizable toolbar would be helpful. But to propose to throw it away to start over is way off base and would seem to indicate that you have no idea of what's actually there now.
Phi Φ @manton one thing that blocked me from using micro.blog as my main was not being able to post images from Files (screenshots, saved memes, exported photos)
