Nope... pictures, music, video, documents, etc are going to eventually transcend "files". That was forward thinking five years ago and its the reality now. It'll only be more complete in the future.
I don't mean for content creators or engineers, I'm talking the majority of consumers.
"Files, and the ability to control them" will still be around for a while at the underlying level and accessible to anyone who cares about working with them. However, the way that a typical user will see/interact with them is likely to change.
Organizing and navigating by strict hierarchical trees of nested folders is on its way out --- the mental picture of a file having one specific "location" will be replaced by searching/matching files tagged with keywords. Instead of navigating to "~/Documents/Photos/Animals/Cats/IMG_1234.jpg," users will type "cat photo" in a navigation box to find matching results. This matches the type of search interaction users are used to for web browsing, and also allows the same document to be more flexibly categorized --- you might be able to find it not just by "cat photo" but also under "last christmas vacation" and "aunt sally's pets." The transition to this way of organizing files is already well under way; most users don't deal with manually defined folder hierarchies to organize their music/movies/photos/etc., but rely on catalog management programs (like iTunes, iPhoto in Apple's case) to locate files by a variety of search methods.
Another change is removing the association between a file and a specific piece of storage hardware. Users are mostly not going to worry where a file is physically located --- whether on a hard drive in their device, on some home network storage, or sitting on some remote server farm and sent over the network when accessed. Most data is likely to be automatically distributed and backed up, with pieces in motion between many locations without user intervention.
jamesf99 wrote:
Actually, what is brain-stem level thinking is blind allegiance to any company (e.g., Canon, Nikon, Leica, Apple, et.al.) as you said, however, giving too much, and undue, credit to a company that has simply modified the seminal ideas of others and then claims and markets it as their own "innovation" is not exactly evolved IMO.
Of course, everyone has selective vision, and apple relies on this more than any company in the world.
actually, both of these are the same kind of thinking. this type of thinking is a result of the evolutionary advantage tribalism conferred on our ancestors. it does often lead to silly behaviors in modern societies, though it still probably confers an evolutionary advantage.
mpmendenhall wrote:
"Files, and the ability to control them" will still be around for a while at the underlying level and accessible to anyone who cares about working with them. However, the way that a typical user will see/interact with them is likely to change.
Organizing and navigating by strict hierarchical trees of nested folders is on its way out --- the mental picture of a file having one specific "location" will be replaced by searching/matching files tagged with keywords. Instead of navigating to "~/Documents/Photos/Animals/Cats/IMG_1234.jpg," users will type "cat photo" in a navigation box to find matching results. This matches the type of search interaction users are used to for web browsing, and also allows the same document to be more flexibly categorized --- you might be able to find it not just by "cat photo" but also under "last christmas vacation" and "aunt sally's pets." The transition to this way of organizing files is already well under way; most users don't deal with manually defined folder hierarchies to organize their music/movies/photos/etc., but rely on catalog management programs (like iTunes, iPhoto in Apple's case) to locate files by a variety of search methods.
Another change is removing the association between a file and a specific piece of storage hardware. Users are mostly not going to worry where a file is physically located --- whether on a hard drive in their device, on some home network storage, or sitting on some remote server farm and sent over the network when accessed. Most data is likely to be automatically distributed and backed up, with pieces in motion between many locations without user intervention....Show more →
I agree. Data architecture has been changing for quite a while, both conceptually and physically. I did a lot of work with large publishers on taxonomies, ontologies, keywording, and tangentially, the preliminary cloud storage concept for them, so I have a passing acquaintance with the new structures and direction.
Just as with the "paperless office" of the past, files - the tangible and discrete unit of all consumer data - will be here.. No doubt about it..
Companies such as apple may make it harder for people to use them, but Win8 (if successful) brings back native control to mobile devices, it's going to make iOS look pretty bad. Will it be "game over"? Possibly, but we'll have to wait and see...
on a digression.. iTunes.. Ugg.. has there ever been a worse piece of garbage software written? That's OK, I know the answer, and it's yes, one.. Adobe's LR v 1.0.. real garbage, but back OT, the sooner iTunes is put to an ignominious and public death, the better. It's a horrible piece of.....uhh, "software"......
Tariq Gibran wrote:
... It's much easier to unlock the bootloader and root the majority of Android devices (some methods are literally one click procedures any novice can perform) as most manufacturers, as well as Google, do not actively prevent the owner/ user of the device from doing so with every software update ala Apple.
it may be much easier on android now, but prior to the iphone most phone makers did actively try to do this (to be fair a lot of this was at the request of the service providers), and camera makers today do this as well. i really don't think that apple could be any more closed than current camera makers are (or past phone makers were) and the new features apple could bring to cameras would force current camera makers to open their systems more in order to compete simply because they do not have apple's software design expertise/resources.
jamesf99 wrote:
on a digression.. iTunes.. Ugg.. has there ever been a worse piece of garbage software written? That's OK, I know the answer, and it's yes, one.. Adobe's LR v 1.0.. real garbage, but back OT, the sooner iTunes is put to an ignominious and public death, the better. It's a horrible piece of.....uhh, "software"......
i would say iphoto is an order of magnitude worse than itunes. you cannot trust any of apple's media software not to do ridiculous things with file locations AND make multiple copies of said files.
Tariq Gibran wrote:
Even without any hacking, Android offered things like wireless printing and turning your phone into a wireless hotspot long before Apple. Even today, Apple still does not offer native hands free, voice activated turn by turn navigation, something I have used on my Android smartphone for quite some time every single day.
While I for one can't stand it when a device tells me when I should turn left or right, I suppose it is "functionality" if you need/want it.
With respect to innovation, it may be true that Android has been adding features faster than Apple, but in many (if not most) UI respects, Android itself is a response to iOS. Many Google engineers concede (in private conversation, sorry can't name references) that Android was always designed as an iOS knockoff. So while the pace of innovation may be faster on the Android side, I would argue that iOS is what really started the consumer explosion in the Smartphone market that has now carried over into the corporate space.
I credit iOS with bringing Smartphones to the masses, a trend which Google quickly recognized and followed. Whether a Blackberry or RAZR could do the things an iPhone could do in 2005 or 2006 hardly matters, since most people were unwilling to suffer with the device's terrible interface design or poor performance until the 0G iPhone came along.
jamesf99 wrote:
on a digression.. iTunes.. Ugg.. has there ever been a worse piece of garbage software written? That's OK, I know the answer, and it's yes, one.. Adobe's LR v 1.0.. real garbage, but back OT, the sooner iTunes is put to an ignominious and public death, the better. It's a horrible piece of.....uhh, "software"......
I used to think iPhoto was worse, but I think you might be right now... iTunes has retaken the crown as the some of the worst software you can put (or comes with) a Mac or PC.
lordarka wrote:
While I for one can't stand it when a device tells me when I should turn left or right, I suppose it is "functionality" if you need/want it.
With respect to innovation, it may be true that Android has been adding features faster than Apple, but in many (if not most) UI respects, Android itself is a response to iOS. Many Google engineers concede (in private conversation, sorry can't name references) that Android was always designed as an iOS knockoff. So while the pace of innovation may be faster on the Android side, I would argue that iOS is what really started the consumer explosion in the Smartphone market that has now carried over into the corporate space.
I credit iOS with bringing Smartphones to the masses, a trend which Google quickly recognized and followed. Whether a Blackberry or RAZR could do the things an iPhone could do in 2005 or 2006 hardly matters, since most people were unwilling to suffer with the device's terrible interface design or poor performance until the 0G iPhone came along. ...Show more →
Google purchased Android in 2005 and unveiled it in 2007. iPhone iOS was released in summer 2007. Both push the other forward. The speed of added functionality to Android serves as a competitive force pushing Apple to likewise add functionality to iOS. Same with the user interface. Android has a better user interface due to iOS existence. iPhones and iPads would not be what they are today if it was not for the competitive environment which exists. Fortunately for all iOS users, Jobs did not get his way by suing Android out of existence.
Let's see... what we really need is a 26MP dSLR that uses only Apple lenses, uses only Apple chargers, creates images that can only be processed using Apple software on machines made by Apple. Within 24 months, all of it would be obsolescent. And for all this we would pay only about $15K (USD), plus, of course, the Apple lenses, all of which would be designed to fit only one generation of the Apple camera.
The package would be elegant. Oh, yeah, we need this...
davidearls wrote:
Let's see... what we really need is a 26MP dSLR that uses only Apple lenses, uses only Apple chargers, creates images that can only be processed using Apple software on machines made by Apple. Within 24 months, all of it would be obsolescent. And for all this we would pay only about $15K (USD), plus, of course, the Apple lenses, all of which would be designed to fit only one generation of the Apple camera.
The package would be elegant. Oh, yeah, we need this...
Brilliant!
You forgot to mention that any accessories would be rendered useless too.
It looks like if you allow "location services" for a photo app, used with photo tagging, you also allow the app to download your photo library. Nice loophole.
That's OK, I know the answer, and it's yes, one.. Adobe's LR v 1.0.. real garbage, but back OT, the sooner iTunes is put to an ignominious and public death, the better. It's a horrible piece of.....uhh, "software"...... 