[scroot]

To take the Smalltalk angle on this, instead of files you simply have everything in the system described as live objects. These are different from files because they are not just data. A system comprised of such objects has no "applications" or "programs" in the conventional sense -- you just have certain arrangements of objects interacting with each other. This is much more flexible, dynamic, and explorable than just having files for data and stovepiped programs that read those files.

[astrange]

Apps would still appear in a system like this as soon as you have third-party developers, as a natural consequence of Conway’s law. And once you have that, there’s also security and principles like the rule of least power that motivate the current design which you haven’t gotten rid of.

[samatman]

As a matter of user experience, rather than implementation, the 'filesystem' in iOS is just an app. It's one way to handle data sharing and transfer between apps, but it isn't always the best, nor is it the main one.

This has some tradeoffs, everything does, but I'm glad someone is exploring the OS space without considering filesystems as we currently understand them to be an inevitable part of that.

I can imagine an object capabilities framework, in which a 'filesystem' is just an object which owns data, organizes it in the familiar way, and shares capabilities with other objects, being quite useful and powerful.