Re: iPhone USB access

B00ze <B00ze64@hotmail.com> wrote:

Good day.
 
I'm an Android user thinking of getting an iPhone, and I see articles
about apps that let ppl share files with their PCs, and I'm wondering
why is there such an app? If I plug an iPhone into my PC's USB port, do
I not get access to the iPhone's filesysten?

iPhones don't have a filesystem.

Well, of course they do, but they really don't want you to see it.

The way iOS works is it's very app-centric.  Apps own their own buckets of
data which only they can see.  The way to move things between apps is the
'Share' function, rather than app B opening a file saved by app A.

Of course files do exist outside the iOS world, so places like Photos,
Videos, Music and Downloads have some kind of specialness in that apps can
ask to open files from there (not generically - a photo app can't see
Music).  But apps can't open files from other random places, and especially
not files in the buckets belonging to other apps.

Eventually this idea of files being bound to apps became untenable so Apple
introduced the Files app which can see the files in app buckets that apps
expose to the user.  eg if the user exports something as a file then it
appears in that app's bucket in the Files app.  Many apps don't use this.

USB is no different, it only gets this kind of filtered view - I think it
only exposes media via MTP by default.  You also have to allow access on the
phone and unlock it.

The way to get full USB access is as a *backup*, not as file transfer
(commonly called an 'iTunes backup' although in MacOS it's now in the Finder
not the iTunes app).  That's a special Apple protocol and lands with you
getting a full dump of the data from the phone - there are various third
party apps to pick through unencrypted backup files and extract various
things from it, like SMS chat logs.  This is not very convenient for
transferring a few files.

If you have a Mac there's AirDrop, where you can 'share' things directly
from apps on the iPhone to the Mac, but if you're not on a Mac then you have
to use something else.  That's where these third party 'sharing' or
'fileserver' apps come in.

(there's a lot of philosophy here, so some people will say if your using USB
you're doing it wrong - wifi needs no cables, can be quicker than a USB 2.0
Lightning connector, can be more reliable, etc.  For casual usage they're
maybe right, but USB has its uses too)

Theo