Ask HN: Why is inter-device file sharing still a hassle?
* You sit in some pub with a few friends. You show them a video you filmed yesterday on your phone. You're speakers are really bad, and you want to send it to a friend who has better speakers.
--> You try to send the video over What's App. You discover you have no cell reception. You give up.
* You are at a conference, about to give a talk. For some reason, your MacBook won't work with the projector. You want to copy the presentation to some other laptop. The WiFi is overloaded.
--> You spend 5 minutes finding someone who still carries a USB stick and transfer the files.
* You are in an airplane, and you have a bunch of company documents stored on your laptop, which you want to read on your tablet. You forgot your micro USB cable.
--> You are angry at yourself for not installing a file sharing app and for forgetting to send yourself the documents with GMail and downloading them on the tablet.
Everytime I run into one of those situations, I just get angry that there is no easy solution, and most of the time we have to resort to some clutch, like relying on a centralized service like email or messenger apps.
How do we still have this problem in 2016, where we all carry multiple supposedly inter-connected and interoperable devices?
There is an endless amount of file sharing apps for iOS and Android. There are countless protocols and options for discovering devices and sharing files (including "ancient" options like Samba, NFS and FTP).
Why is there no universally accepted standard that facilitates device discovery and file sharing between devices over WiFi AND Bluetooth, with implementations installed by default on every device?
Am I alone in seeing a need here?
85 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 137 ms ] threadBecause every vendor and their dog wants to push their own proprietary toy solution to lock in users, instead of using any of the existing standards.
--> You spend 5 minutes finding someone who still carries a USB stick and transfer the files.
I still do, and perhaps 5-10 years ago, when file sharing as a whole was more... healthy, almost everyone did. MP3 players (except Apple's) also doubled as convenient portable USB mass storage devices. Before that, floppies and null modem cables (remember those?) were pretty popular.
Windows Mobile < 8? Nope iOS? Nope
And plenty of people have to use their company Windows phone.
Can gladly provide you the link to consulting companies that sell such reports.
didn't even try to use Bluetooth for ages, because every time it results in nightmares.
( and yes: Bluetooth was activated and connected )
But once again, the real problem here is that Airdrop is apple-specific. We still have the same fundamental problem that despite having many direct file sharing choices, there is no common way across all the OS/hardware platforms.
personally i can report a C+ experience usually. generally functional, maybe even reliable for a brief while, but buggy as hell throughout.
Or, WiFi direct https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Direct for larger files.
Now there's a problem with discoverabillity and compatibility - but that's no different to trying to get CIFS devices talking to each other.
Apple was traditonally better at this sort of thing ("just works"), but a) it doesn't actually "just work", because their software quality is not up to par, and b) the lack of interoperability means this is only useful if you live in an Apple-only world.
In general, I'd say it will stay like this. Unfortunately.
Other similar examples: E-mail (yes, SMTP and E-mail clients, it all sucks badly, and we can't agree on how to improve it) and instant messaging.
It's one of those things that seems simple (move 1 file 2 inches) but is really complex, with a lot of possible mechanisms, protocols, OSes, devices, and edge cases.
When the Dropbox people were looking for money, VCs would say, "But there are already plenty of ways to keep files in sync." They'd say, "Do you use any of them regularly?" The answer was always no. There was a giant gap that nobody had filled.
And they started with an easier problem, which is one person with multiple devices who wants one folder to be in two places. No features, just a folder that's always the same. (And they started with just desktop OSes.) Transferring files seamlessly between devices owned by different people on demand is much harder. Especially given how mobile OSes have deemphasized the notion of "file" altogether.
So yes, I don't expect a solution either.
This to me hits on the real problem. Filesharing is easy when all files are strings of ones and zeros, to be freely interpreted by programs and stored in a generic filesystem. When your operating system treats files as atomic things that can only be managed by a specific program baked into the OS, filesharing becomes much more difficult.
This is a classic Apple dark pattern that spread to the rest of the industry and is now a poison that can't be easily purged.
Technically, you have a generic filesystem, and individual programs can load files from that, there's no direct relationship between the files and programs. But in the mind of a typical non-tech user, files are something that belong to a program.
So I taka a photo via iOS, connect to Wifi so Dropbox uploads the photo, open the file on my laptop, highlight and tag the feature, and put it on Slack. It's way better than a USB cable but there's so much more technology involved in the chain.
I think for me it's difficult to imagine a better solution though. So what's the ideal experience? Does it fit into the existing computing paradigm or no?
Maybe we should push a standard for local file-sharing so that all vendors will implement it in their mobile operating systems.
Before that, the best thing for file sharing was Bump, which was kind of hacky, and required internet as a result, but did work. Sadly, Bump is no more.
As for sharing files with yourself, my answer is typically SFTP, which is excellent, provided it does what you want. It also works well for transferring files at conferences, providing your slides aren't to big to make the roundtrip in good time. A bit hacky, yes, but it works.
https://xkcd.com/949/
Open source is the only way this could be fixed, and unfortunately that is mostly the kingdom of developers who already think this is a solved problem via ssh, virtual networks, etc. Developers tend not to care about end user problems unless... well... there is a business in it!
However, these companies have financial incentives to do the opposite: they want users to do everything within tightly controlled platforms like Google Drive and iCloud, and they want to avoid commoditization at all costs. The last thing these companies want is for users to be able easily to transfer all their videos, music, photos, work files, contacts, calendar data, bookmarks, etc. from one platform to another.
The behavior of these companies is analogous to the behavor of AT&T at the beginning of the 20th century. AT&T had the largest telephone network with the most users, and smaller independent phone companies wanted to interconnect with it, but AT&T refused to do so, causing users to leave the smaller networks for AT&T's. Users of the smaller networks were unable to connect with users of the largest network. It wasn't until after the US federal government challenged AT&T for monopolistic behavior that this changed. In 1913, AT&T settled with the government in the "Kingsbury Committment," which required AT&T to allow non-competing independent telephone companies to interconnect with the AT&T network.[1]
I suspect the only way we can get easy and cross-platform data portability (local and otherwise) is via government intervention -- that is, if the government forces companies to do it for society's benefit (for example, by legally requiring compatibility with open data-sharing and app-interconnection standards), at the expense of user lock-in and corporate profits.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsbury_Commitment
My hope is that the propellerheads in those companies are able to figure out a way to sneak this killer feature past their respective marketing people.
For example, if you live in the US, you are legally required by the government to drive on the right side of the road (to avoid the chaos of the past, when each US city and state had different driving rules), and you are also legally required to buy car insurance (to make sure irresponsible drivers who cause more accidents don't get a free ride from responsible drivers). I think most people would agree these are reasonable government solutions that are not too intrusive.
Perhaps it might be possible to come up with reasonable "rules of the road" that are not too intrusive and which the government can enforce so all of us -- all of society -- can easily share data between applications and platforms?
It seems however they should however be balanced by a powerful population.
Unfortunately I don't think they will. After Apple weaseled out of open sourcing Facetime and with Microsoft running their own cloud I won't bet much on it.
[It] synchronizes files across your/your team's computers. It's much better than uploading or email, because it's automatic, integrated into Windows, and fits into the way you already work. There's also a web interface, and the files are securely backed up to Amazon S3. [It] is kind of like taking the best elements of subversion, trac and rsync and making them "just work" for the average individual or team. Hackers have access to these tools, but normal people don't.
The problem has been attacked many times, but only centralized subscription services and hardware vendor walled gardens have succeeded as businesses.
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27532820/app.html]
That is the problem right there. It shouldn't be a business. It should be a standard for all devices e.g keyboard and mice work out of the box everywhere.
There was an open source file system aiming for just that, including internet-based storage named 'opfs' or something but I can't find it anywhere now.
I think the marketing term is "WiFi Direct". But good luck getting Apple and Samsung devices to both discover and associate with each other.
If it feels like you're continually being corralled into sharing files with the person next to you via a third party's servers and an open, insecure, untrusted network ("the internet"), then maybe you are.
It is not necessary to use the internet and third parties to do something as simple as transfer files to the person sitting next to you (without using removable media), but it's easy for companies to convince users that this is the only way to do it.
And in most cases no convincing is even necessary because users fail to consider the alternatives.
Once Android is supported, this might actually become the universal way to share stuff.
Thanks!
Disclaimer: I used to work for mimik.
They have a tiny loop, but I prefer to always keep it plugged in to my laptop.
Always works.
Except with smartphones.
Then Apple killed Bluetooth by never supporting it well on the iPhone, and then implemented their proprietary AirDrop (which is actually LESS reliable for me, between Apple devices(!), than Bluetooth OPP was)