Most "native" way of managing files

cesarpixel wrote:

I suppose you don't have to go to the photo app for the photos, the note app for the notes, iBooks for the pdfs, and so on, do you?

Yes, you do, unless you use a third party app. Personally, I store everything in Evernote.

Another option would be to use offline storage like dropbox or google drive, and then use apps that can interact with that offline storage service (e.g. a number of Note apps have built in support for dropbox and/or google drive).

However, no third party app is going to work the way you would like, since apps are isolated from eachother and thus cannot share their own saved content (the exception being iOS bundled apps which Apple can enable to share some specific content or information with other apps).

As far as I know, there's no "native" way to do this. It's one of those things that drove me crazy when I first got an iPhone, and hasn't bothered me since. It's a common problem when people who know something about computers encounter iOS for the first time 🙂

I recommend DropBox, which gives you a way to set up a directory tree any way you want that "plays nice" with the iPhone apps, and has the added benefity of syncing your stuff to the web and/or other devices/computers.

Google Drive is similar and gives you more free space, but lacks some features of Dropbox and is still kind of buggy.

Apple has always believed they know what's best for you, whether you like it or not.

When they developed iOS, they decided that users did not need access to the underlying file system, and decreed that this would be so until the end of time. This made some sense for iPods and iPhones, which were not meant for general purpose computing, but you've shown that even with those you run into trouble.

This philisophy became totally ludicrous when they came out with the iPad, which is capable of "real work". This is evidenced by the profusion of ad hoc work arounds. The most natural of these link various cloud services, and DropBox has become the lingua franca.

For example, I don't have an Airprint printer, so I have to use a third party printer program. To get around the fact that it's not integrated into the operating system, it's got its own email and web support, but the natural way to use it with other programs is to connect them all DropBox, GoogleDrive, etc, and just pretend *that's* the native file system.

Apple would of course just advise me to throw out my perfectly good printer and buy one with Airprint 🙂

ejpre wrote:

Apple has always believed they know what's best for you, whether you like it or not.

When they developed iOS, they decided that users did not need access to the underlying file system, and decreed that this would be so until the end of time. This made some sense for iPods and iPhones, which were not meant for general purpose computing, but you've shown that even with those you run into trouble.

No, Apple decided that a much more secure mobile computing operating system model was to use a fully sandboxed data structure. This isolates apps and their content in RAM, making virus/trojans and other harmful code incapable of infecting an entire device, compromising personal information and security and potential harm.

Unlike Android, which already has to deal with a rapidly growing number of various malware and virus code that can easily cause major problems for owners/users of Android mobile devices. You'll note, there is no AV software for iOS, while there are several commercial AV apps for Android. The only known virus on an iOS device, have been on jailbroken devices, as that process eliminates the very security model around which iOS is based.

Not to state the very obvious, but malware - by definition - breaks the rules. iOS is a Unix-based operating system, with a unix file structure. Simply hiding the file system doesn't change that. There's no malware primariy because Apple tightly controls the software going onto the system and gives everything a thorough rectal probe before releasing it.

They could easily have built a captive file system, well isolated from system files, with no implications for security. They obviously had their reasons for not doing that, but security was not one of them (or not a big one anyway). That's essentially what happens with these third party apps. It's just kind of a Rube Goldberg solution to the problem.

The fact is Apple kinda-sorta does that now, too, with Cloud documents, it's just that that came late to the game and has *extremely* limited OS support, so it's a non-starter for a lot of people. For example, it would only run on one of the *five* computers I use at work and at home, so I run DropBox instead, which runs on all of them and has a lot of nice features lacking on Cloud.

You might find this an interesting read - http://images.apple.com/ipad/business/docs/iOS_Security_May12.pdf

The did a lot more than merely "hiding the file system".

Regardless, the fact remains that iOS has no known virus or malware exploits - every single other mobile device operating system does.

That was actually my point. None of this extensive security has anything whatsoever to do with denying users access to the file structure.

And by the way, exploits have been found. Not many, but they do exist. eg,

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/09/19/dutch-security-researchers-hack-apple-iph one-4s-exploiting-safari/

That's strange. I copy files to and from my iPhone all the time using apps designed for that purpose. I NEVER use email for file transfers; its too limiting. Most of the apps I use work over WiFi, which is much more reliable and faster than BlueTooth could ever be. However, Dropbox and LiveDrive work over the Internet, so I'm not even limited to WiFi.

I think you need to read the manual. I know it's a radical idea, but you will learn a lot that is useful.

The iPhone expects you to have NO photos in the Camera Roll, except between the time you take them and the time you transfer them to your computer, just like you would with any other digital camera. Once on your computer you get to organize them with iPhoto or your favorite photo management tool (I use Picasa, for example), then transfer them to the Photo Album app on the phone. Or to one of the many photo album apps in the legitimate App Store. I use MyPics, for example, which retrieves my photos from my online Picasa site.

Use GoodReader, create folder, add photos, ppts, doc into it.