[prmph]

Indeed, that's why it bothers me that major technology vendors, especially Apple, would like to do away with the very concept of files, at least for non-power users.

They make it seem like data is bound up with apps, and should not have an independent existence. They also make it hard to import/export data, except via backups, which a very crude way of taking control of your personal data.

I'm working on a tool to work around these issues to the extent possible, allowing users to extract their information, as granular files, from device backups into their personal digital library. For immutable data, archival is ok, but for editable data, the biggest challenge is how to make the extracted data "live", i.e., available and editable on the devices again, preferably in the same apps used to create them. There seems to be no good solutions.

[jl6]

Apple keep their casual users on a short leash, but for those willing to tinker, iOS device backups are actually quite good for that archive use case, as you can extract most of your important data in the form of SQLite database files. The whole process is high friction and very user-unfriendly, and open documentation of these databases is lacking, but the fact that this route still exists at all is encouraging (in the sense that all hope is not yet lost). They could very easily have hidden all these files behind an Apple-managed encryption key. On the other hand, this niche affordance may serve to placate the power users who would be most likely to cause noise and revolt if our personal needs were not met. On the gripping hand, the device backup mechanism via iTunes feels so ancient that they probably just haven’t thought about it.

[prmph]

> The whole process is high friction and very user-unfriendly, and open documentation of these databases is lacking

Yeah, that's what I want to abstract way. There are tools that do this to some extent, but they stop at backup extraction, without helping you to integrate the extracted data into a proper personal digital library with easy retrieval.