The iPad Needs a File System And Multiple Window Views

Tech.pinions contributor Steve Wildstrom riffs on former senior Apple executive and founder of Be Inc. Jean-Louis Gasseé’s recent essay “iPad Pro: The Missing Workflow,” in which writes about how the lack of a true user-accessible file system is holding back more intensive use of the iPad as a creation tool. Wildstrom says he couldnt agree with Gasseé more, and neither could your editor.

Wildstrom says his creative process, and he expects that of many others (certainly mine – CM), consists of creating documents by writing original text combined with bits and pieces from a variety of sources, including web pages, image files, Word documents, PDF files, email messages, tweets, and who knows what else. He notes that on a Mac or a Windows PC, that’s very easy to do by opening multiple windows and cutting and pasting between them, but the lack of multiple windows can’t easily be overcome on a tablet, since at best, you could manage two small windows on the limited display real estate.

II’ll still take that happily! Half a loaf….

But he contends that Apple makes this even harder than it need to be by imposing tight restrictions on communications between iOS apps and by denying users access to any sort of listing of files available on the system. Wildstrom says he loves traveling without a laptop, but even writing a simple blog post on an iPad is a lot more challenging that it ought to be because of Apple’s arbitrarily-imposed limitations, but he’s not optimistic about reform.

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