Embed Notice

The thing is, files, at least as most OSes used to treat them, were data with a name and access rights. Unix generalized the utility of having naming and access rights for data by making the data's interpretation up to the program doing the asking.

Today, "apps" and "widgets" and whatever else own the files, not letting other programs use them. You can't grep a spreadsheet or put a PDF into your Photos app (the thing that actually triggered this today)...