[tracerbits]

The interesting part isn't the file abstraction itself, it's that this pushes the dividing line between "object store" and "filesystem" another notch toward filesystem. The absence of in-place updates was always the load-bearing wall keeping S3 cheap and durable in the way it is — if Files preserves that and only makes the read API friendlier, fine.

If they ever ship in-place writes I'd want to see what happens to the consistency model and pricing first. That's where the actual simplicity lived, not in the API surface. Half the appeal of S3 over a real filesystem was that you couldn't shoot yourself in the foot with partial overwrites.