TH has been on a slow(?) decline since they were bought by Purch. It’s just another tech media site desperate for clicks, and negative Apple stories earn lots of clicks.
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Indeed, TH used to be one of my go-to reads.
I just noticed something else really off in his article. He also writes that apps can’t be put side-by-side in Stage Manager. 
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I find the whole file-handling saga on iPad to be a chore. Every app seems to have its own take on how one should open/save files, and if the document in question is an image, there is also the choice of the Photos library.
Part of it is choosing between “this application’s iCloud folder” and “iCloud Drive” and “On this iPad” and then finding them again later.
On my Mac, if I want to find something I start with Finder. If I start with Files on an iPad, it can be a mission opening the file in the right app sometimes.
It’s just not as polished. Let’s not forget the iPad interface, in general, has had significant redesigns in its 14 year life, as well as major new paradigms. The Mac’s Finder has been essentially the same that entire time. Because it just works.
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I’m wondering if AI will render the Finder/Files App obsolete or nearly so. If AI proves as robust as demonstrations would lead us to believe, I can see a world where every file, regardless of type, can be dumped into one bucket. AI would be used to ferret out individual documents, a combination of documents, or even a summary of a document or synthesize many documents. File management would become largely, not necessarily entirely, irrelevant. Time will tell.
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No, absolutely not. I have two use cases that require real folders and organization of files. It’s fundamental to what I do and apps I use.
At any given moment I manage 7-10 client websites. Each is a folder of html files, css, images and pdfs. This requires proper folders as files are specific to each client.
Additionally, Affinity Publisher documents are organized into folders because images are linked. Managing this sort of thing without folders would be impossible. Some Publisher documents link to 25+ images. Can you imagine trying to find/manage a folder of design documents that sit an a folder or next to a folder of images with 2,000+ images from 30 different clients?
So, no, no way. This is the sort of thing that sounds neat but in real-world workflows falls apart.
That said, it might work great for you! Or for some people some of the time.
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An astronomy professor, who was quoted in an article a few years ago, said her new students had no concept of nested folders. They had grown up with search and saw no problem keeping thousands of files in one folder. I have known multiple executives and managers who kept the majority of their files on their Mac desktop. Sometimes hundreds of them stacked 4 or 5 deep.
I started relying on search in Evernote 10 or 15 years ago, and today have the majority of my data on Google Drive loosely organized in 10 folders. I can quickly find just about anything using one query to search everything (email, contacts, calendars, spreadsheets, files, etc) in my account.
I expect AI to bring even better search to our computers and phones.
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I’m the same way. I use 2 - 11 spaces at time to keep related tasks together. Some apps I let go full screen to prevent another app window from covering it.
When I need to run Windows app, the Parallels app gets either full screen or a window, depending on the task.
I also keep 20 ish smb file shares mounted using automounter to since I work with NAS hosted files as well.
My M1 Macbook uses both built-in and external displays to increase my visual real estate.
I barely use my iPad, since it cannot do a fraction of what my Macbook can do! It’s good when I’m traveling, though I leave most tasks for when I’m at my computer.
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I think this would be a welcome improvement — full control of what I open files in. Just give me the “Open In” like other computers.
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Isn’t that what the share sheet is?
We wish…
The share sheet is a hot mess 
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Indeed.
Arguably one of the most supported types of content on iOS/iPadOS would have to be images. Yet there are some situations where I cannot send an image to the Photos app.
Maybe if I could be bothered using split-screen or slide-over or some such I might be able to drag it, but I suspect the two mechanisms are actually the same under the covers.
Downloaded images are also an interesting use case for me. Currently, I save them to the Downloads folder. Hazel takes over from there.
If the image is in webp format, it converts it to PNG. If the image is already in my Photos library, it moves it into a “duplicates” folder that I clean out periodically. If the image gets past those 2 “tests”, Hazel puts a copy on my NAS “images” share, and finally adds it to the Photos library.
I would be lost trying to duplicate this automation with just and iPad. I’m not saying that it cannot be done with shortcuts, but that is beyond my skill level.
update fixed spelling.
That’s fine for personal files.
It would not stand a chance in any business or professional setting.
Imagine if your doctor, lawyer, accountant or just about any other vendor/client did that. Utterly unprofessional chaos.
The servers I managed for my previous companies were set up with their own hierarchy and still one of the most common requests I got from users was help finding their files.
For those setting up a law office the American Bar Association published suggestions on how a lawyer could manage a solo practice on Google Workspace. And Google has a HIPAA Implementation Guide for doctors using their service. Every country, government, and business, etc. seems to have their own set of guidelines.
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It’s funny because I agree with the responses already that the Share Sheet can be a little temperamental at times. The lack of consistency on when it works can be a pain point. But what also makes me laugh is there are times I’m on my Mac and I miss the Share Sheet from my iPad.
Getting articles into Reader (from Readwise), for instance, is so much easier on my iPad via Share Sheet than on the Mac with the Safari extension.
But then of course, Reader is crippled on iPadOS, and they don’t seem to have any interest in fixing it, so that’s a different downside.
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I didn’t realize the issue with the share sheet was that it was temperamental for people. I can pretty much get files where I need them without too much difficulty. But, there have been times in the past where the share sheet didn’t populate some app or shortcut it normally would surface for the type of data I had selected.
Before iPadOS 17, I mostly saw that with shortcuts that were missing from the sheet. For example, @Denny gave me a shortcut for stripping formatting from text that I rely on heavily. Sometimes, it wouldn’t show up in the share sheet and that was irritating. I haven’t had any issues like that (that are coming to memory) in some time, though.
It’s fine using Apple apps and iCloud for me, but once I step out of the Apple ecosystem is where I have issues. Especially with companies that want you to use their own cloud system. I have been using Files and and the share sheet a lot more lately (because of this forum’s discussions) and I repeatedly have issues using Microsoft apps. If I stay within MS ecosystem on iPad, everything works though. Granted, that is more MS fault than it is Apples, but that holds iOS back. I don’t have any of these issues on a Mac.
I dislike the Sharesheet because it so cluttered, I don’t need/want most of what is on there. I have tried to lock it down in the past, but over time it tends to get more cluttered again.
I will say Files works better than I originally thought it did, but I still find it breaks a lot using 3rd party apps. The fact that it doesn’t update unless it is used frequently is unacceptable for me. It needs to always update, whether I used it yesterday or last month.
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I deal with this issue quite a bit using Word. MS made a change a few years ago to bury the share sheet. So, if you want to export a document, you have to click and tap many times before getting to the files app. It’s not as troublesome to get to open documents in Word because you just select the Files App option in the menu.
MS is not shy about pushing users to OneDrive.
I have a real bad problem with syncing MS products. The Files app will show the document has a change date of today. I open the file from Files using the share sheet and it opens a January version of the file. I cannot for the life of me figure out why it is doing that. I have given up, again. I can’t use MS products on an iPad, it is broken for me.
I want downloaded mages to be automatically deleted when I’m finished with them since I keep them around only for a spell. (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself 
)
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