Sunday, June 05, 2011
It is time to kill the file system
I am sure you have watched the video preview of Windows 8. If you haven't, shame on you, it will turn out to be a crucial moment in the history of computing... Ok, ok, I'll add it below here. Watch it and then come back.
Now, tell me what you felt and what you remember if you close your eyes.
Exactly, it is all smooth and nice and wow until you get around minute 3:00. He opens Excel, Windows creeps in from below and you think "oh, s**t, that's ugly, I want to go back to the other interface!".
I think that reaction is telling. We want good UIs, we want the new touch interface, we are tired of windows, we like tiles and things that magically update themselves. However, Microsoft needs to be backward compatible and - as Michael points out - they were successful once with launching Windows 3.1 while having the ugly DOS window in the background. Maybe they can do it again.
Maybe.
The problem is that we have moved on. Mentally. We, as users of mobile devices and tablets. We like what we have now, we do not want to go back. The paradigm has shifted, a new era has begun, mobile is becoming desktop. The desktop is tired, it needs to move, to become mobile.
One thing in particular kills me in that video. He says: "Because it is a PC, it has a file system". I think it tells everything. It is a PC, it has a file system, it must have a file system, right? Or it would not be a PC!
I do not think so.
The file system is dead.
Think about it. It is the biggest change introduced by Apple with iOS. There is no file system. Documents live within applications. Pictures live within the picture app. Videos within the video app. Books within iBooks. You can move stuff around (from Mail to iBooks) but there is no concept of file system.
I know you know what a file system is. But ask your parents. Did they ever understood the concept. Fully? Do they ever created folders within folders? Do they get the tree? No. It is complicated. It is not intuitive.
Actually, it is not necessary at all. It is a complication of the metaphor. One we can live without.
Of course you'll have a file system underneath. I am not advocating killing the OS file system. We geeks will use it to move stuff around, but the end users do not need it.
Eventually, they will not need the old Windows UI either.
Posted by Fabrizio Capobianco at 10:11
7 Comments:
The thing is, I don't see the mouse or keyboard as obsolete... So a touch based UI like the one we see above seems a little overboard for a desktop OS. I mean, yes it looks nice, and maybe I'm just a dinosaur in this sense, but I much prefer the Windows 7 look for desktops. I see what they are trying to do, they are trying to phase into a new era, but I think what they're trying to do is beat Apple to the punch, and so they're a bit sloppy.
I personally can't live without the filesystem, if I want to download a movie and not have it with all the rest of my movies I should be able to do that, I like to organize things my way, and I will never give up that control.
Comment Posted at 12:49
Fabrizio said...
I believe the mouse is dead. It is touch from now on. I do not mean you have to touch the screen, you will touch something on your desk (see the Apple Magic Trackpad as an example).
I believe the keyboard is here to stay. I am not giving up on it for sure.
Lastly, if you get an iPad you will see you can live without the file system ;-) However, I love it and I will always hope there is a chance for us geeks to get access to it.
But it is hard to understand and it is not for everyone. If we want the computing era to progress, we'll have to give it up.
Comment Posted at 16:44
about said...
I believe that your brain cells are dead :)
You're encouraging the methods of monopols to control what exactly we will do with our computers/mobiles etc.
This obsequious behaviour is not shows any tip for the future of computing too.
Comment Posted at 05:45
I'm not sure I entirely agree with you that the filesystem is dead. I look at my Ipad and see photos stored hierarchically by year and month. I look at my music on my ipad and see it stored by genre, artist and album. Whether you call this sorting of large amounts of data a filesystem or just hierarchical storage is in my mind purely semantics.
We may not be using Windows Explorer in 5 years, but to suggest that end users will not need to understand file hierarchy to sort their data seems to be a bridge too far. Whether this means lots of little hierarchies (one per application) or one large hierarchy per device is again semantics. How else would you propose I wade through my 15,000 photos and 5,000 songs without some kind of capability in the applications to sort through the gobs and gobs of data?
Perhaps "Windows Explorer is dead" or "the ability to see all my data from a single point (root) being no longer needed" would be a more appropriate statement- and that's one I can definitely agree with.
Comment Posted at 07:42
Fabrizio said...
I am not advocating for the end of collections... Of course in the music app you will have albums and collection of songs under the author, genre and so on. It is a categorization that makes sense within the app. You will probably have folders of documents within the Word app as well. And albums of pictures.
I totally disagree that the difference between hierarchy per app and hierarchy per device is semantic. It changes everything. The metaphor is completely different because files have a special meaning inside the app and are treated as such. The user experience is different. The entire feel of the operating system changes.
I know, hard to see it if you know what a file system is. Go out and check how people perceive the file system. Avoid techies. Scout for those with no preconceived knowledge. You'll be surprised.
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 08:35
I'm not sure that using the fact that filesystems are not front and foremost on your 95 year old Sicilian grandmother's mind, means that they are not relevant:-).
Lot's of great italian institutions were (and are) established on the basis of hierarchy, grouping and inter-dependancy. It's not a new thing- you're just biased against MSFT Windows. But it's actually a very natural representation of how non-technical people sort data.
-The catholic church.
-The modern day postal system (Cursus Publicus)
-Italian Soccer!!
-The great Roman Army (past not present!)
OK, so I'm sure you get the fact that hierarchy has existed for a long time - but what about the inter-dependancy between hierarchies?
-The role of the priest/bishop/cardinal in Italian society. (church seniority still carries gravitas in other environments)
-The use of your postal address to determine what school your kids go to, who fixes the hole in the street and provides phone and electricity services to your home.
-The star factor people put on Serie A players versus other leagues, that gets them into the best clubs, the best tables at restaurants and the cutest girls!
Clearly hierarchy transcends other unrelated groups, and has relevance across other hierarchies.
Perhaps your italian grandmother needs to go to nightclubs more often:-)
Comment Posted at 22:38
Fabrizio said...
This wins the Comment of the Year award!!
Thanks,
fabrizio
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