[ugh]

Doesn’t have to be, though. Can’t you have both?

iTunes does pretty well but doesn’t make it all the way. More a fault of the of metadata than iTunes. You are be able to access your music the old-fashioned (crappy) way – which doesn’t make any sense for music – but there you go. All nicely organized in folders. That’s how it should be. I want specialized apps, I don’t think any generic file browser could be as feature rich as specialized apps without turning into some kind hybrid monster and usability abomination.

So it’s possible. Sure, it’s also hard.

[habitue]

It's possible sure, it's not hard, Apple will just never want to do it. Just like Microsoft, lock-in is not something they want to avoid.