Ever since the very first Mac appeared, the question “Where’s my file?” has been asked over and over again. Depending on the app, it may be saved to one folder or another by default, and there may be special settings for that. But at the end of the day, the location might not be crystal clear.

Worse, it’s not that the normal OS X tools to locate a file offer the best solutions. Many Mac users don’t even use the Open/Save dialogs, let alone a third-party enhancement, such as Default Folder X. Indeed, I’ve observed people double-clicking directly on files to open them, even when the proper app is already running.

The heart of all this is that we have come to regard a file as a single chunk of data that exists in a fixed spot on your Mac or PC’s hard drive. You change it, the original file is altered. If you erase that file, it’s gone. Well, not actually. The normal Erase or Delete function will remove the pointer or index entry to that file, making the space on your hard drive available for new data to be written.

Now as has been pointed out elsewhere, Apple has been working towards removing the direct reference to a specific file in a physical location. These days, the stuff you create on your Mac may be stored on a local hard drive, an iPhone, an iPad, or even in iCloud. When it comes to the cloud, you’re not dealing with a single computer with a single drive, but a sprawling network of servers, which means there may not be a specific place where that file is located, and it’s possible locations may shift from time to time as servers are upgraded or content is moved to a different datacenter.

The lack of an apparent visible file location is particularly apparent in the iOS. With applications sandboxed, each app owns its own document space. If a document is opened in another app, it has to be shared with that app, which will then create its own copy. Confusing? You betcha! Multiple versions may also mean that each is in a separate state of completion, and may not represent the file’s current state or revision level.

As OS X takes on more of the characteristics of iOS, some wonder whether the way files are managed, not to mention the actual file system, will change too. I suppose it’s possible, but Mac users are still wedded to the file/folder routine, although iTunes and iPhone, for example, shield you from such fineries.

The key problem with iOS files is the lack of a central repository. You’d certainly want to use space efficiently, particularly on an iPhone and an iPad, which would seem to argue against having a separate copy for each app. However, opening up file privileges of this sort seems to argue against Apple’s sandboxing scheme. While I understand the reasons for wanting to keep the platform as free of malware as possible, when the customer is inconvenienced, something is wrong.

There are also reports that Apple is working on revising the aging OS X Finder, but you wonder whether it’ll make file navigation much simpler, or just add a few refinements, such as tabs. Does that really address the ongoing confusion over file locations and access. In the end, do we even need the current file/folder scheme, which is so 1980s? And, yes, I know Spotlight can help, or confuse you even more with loads of choices that may still omit the file you’re looking for.

This is but one dilemma that Apple will no doubt have to confront as OS X and iOS are updated in the years to come. I suppose there might even be some changes with the next update, but that won’t be known until the WWDC in June.

The other issue, one I’ve raised already, is whether it’s possible to have a single file format for all documents. But that isn’t just choosing the right format, and one of our readers suggested HTML as a possibility. It’s the problem of including all the file information that would allow you to open any document created in any application. That move would also require the support of app developers who make their proprietary formats a matter of reducing access by competitors. That hasn’t stopped other app developers from finding “unofficial” ways to parse data, but it also means that the translation process is often highly imperfect.

I wouldn’t presume to guess whether it’s possible to persuade some of the worst offenders when it comes to proprietary file formats, such as Adobe, to put them all into the public domain. But I think that the file format shouldn’t be the selling factor for an app. It should be about performance, having the features you want, along with a reasonably user friendly interface. Whether another app can read your documents is probably one of the last items on the bill of particulars, although it’s quite important if you want to read existing documents after moving to a new app. This is particularly true if you’re switching, say, from a PC to a Mac, and there’s no equivalent app at hand.

For now, I’m avoiding the question of whether Apple will continue to use its aging file system, or come up with something modern and more robust. Besides, regular people don’t care about file systems anyway, right?

One unfortunate way to compare tech gear is the spec list. The longer, the better. This is what appears to drive Consumer Reports magazine in giving one product a higher rating than another. But that doesn’t mean the feature works as advertised or, for that matter, serves a legitimate need.

Now Samsung’s Galaxy S4 was launched in March touting loads of new features, all designed to gain a leg up on the competition. It’s important to note that these features weren’t Android features. They were Samsung features, and Android was barely mentioned during the rollout of the S4. But it’s not that Google will necessarily complain, since Samsung sells more Android gear than any other company on the planet.

Some of the S4’s features sound intriguing, such as the ability to remove someone when you take a video. This is meant to repair the damage caused when an outsider interrupts what would be the perfect take for a family movie. It has to happen when the video is being made, though, which means you cannot just exorcise the family member who is no longer a family member due to divorce, or a significant other who has moved on. But I suppose this gimmicky feature may have some value.

There’s another, where you tilt your head to scroll a screen of text up or down. I gather this has proven to be fairly impractical in real use, but will withhold my final judgment until I have a chance to fully test this feature.

The point is that Samsung’s goal was to trump Apple and other companies with a product that simply does more, even if it doesn’t do everything well. It has a larger screen, possibly speedier performance than the iPhone 5, which came out last September, and oh so many new features that nobody can possibly compete.

The reviews have been mixed. While the S4 gets high ratings, some felt the hardware changes were just a natural evolution rather than anything significant. The surfeit of features was also afforded a mixed reaction, as is the unfortunate fact that the storage capacity of the 16GB version is almost halved by adding all that stuff. This brings to mind the criticism leveled at Microsoft for the software bloat that severely reduces free space on the Surface tablets.

Now one of the arguments Apple executives make when asked about this or that feature is that good design involves knowing what to add and what to remove. Some suggest Apple is perhaps a little too enthusiastic about removing features, such as ditching the optical drives on the 2012 iMac, recent Mac minis, and on two lines of Mac note-books. But Apple did the same thing with floppy drives starting with the original iMac in 1998, and emerged unscathed. They also created a nice market for external floppy drives for a while, until technology passed it by.

This time however, Apple is selling their own external DVD drive, so the market has been blocked at the starting gate, unless you want a Blu-ray drive, which is something Apple has never supported.

But none of this means that Apple shouldn’t flesh out the feature set of the next iPhone, presumably an iPhone 5s, nor iOS 7. Some suggest NFC, a near field networking system that is said to be useful for financial transactions. Others point to improving the iOS Notification Center and perhaps adding the ability to run apps side by side. There are plenty of wish lists for both, but I’ll only suggest again that adding too much stuff can confuse customers rather than enhance usability. This may be a problem that Samsung will confront as more and more people acquire the Galaxy S4.

Indeed, Apple may be looking to simplify the iOS even further, if reports of a slimmed down interface are correct. If app functions are more closely aligned, and that’s not always the case with iOS, it’ll be easier for customers to accept new apps and get them up and running in short order.

In addition to the complexities of Notification Center, some suggest that Apple needs to spruce up some of the core features, such as cut, copy and paste, which is an awkward process and doesn’t always work the first time. That is not in keeping with the Apple tradition that things just work. There are also complaints that basic functions, such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, ought to be easier to switch on or off, rather than forcing you to go through several layers of settings. That’s a double-edge sword. Making it too easy may result in the problem I’ve encountered with Android gear, that you can accidentally turn one or the other off with a wayward tap. Apple always needs to account for the consequences of user error.

Regardless, there are millions and millions of customers who buy smartphones on the basis of bullet points. But the fact that the iPhone traditionally gets higher praise from customers makes it clear that having the most features is not always the best way to go.

In fact, do you hate any company? Do you hate Microsoft if you’re a Mac user, or Samsung if you prefer the iPhone and iPad? What about hating Ford if you prefer a Honda, or Mercedes-Benz if there’s an Audi in your driveway?

Does it even make sense to despise the company whose products you don’t buy? Well, maybe you might if you once bought something from a company and were dissatisfied. But is that any reason to despise them? What a waste of energy!

But that didn’t stop a certain financial publication from publishing a blog that listed “10 reasons to hate Apple.” The writer in question claims to have received all sorts of attacks from people who didn’t appreciate it when he wrote anything that would be perceived as favorable to Apple, but the initial version of his list is perfectly silly.

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You know the score. You receive a file from someone, and nothing you have on your Mac or PC can open that document. Nothing. It might as well be empty space as far as you’re concerned, and therein lies the dilemma. How do you weigh a company’s interests in having a proprietary format that requires the use of their app against the right of having the freedom to read any document directed to your attention without buying new software?

Now as far as the U.S. government is concerned, there’s now an executive order from President Obama that is intended to make data “open and machine-readable.” Without going into the fine details, it basically means that material that’s intended for public release should be read by anyone who is able to access the information.

In the real world, that probably means Adobe PDF, which has become the universal standard for electronic documents. Regardless of which app you used to create the data, there’s a decent chance there’s a PDF import and export option somewhere. On the Mac it’s part of the OS, although you can also use an app’s proprietary PDF encoding scheme for specific uses, such as setting up a printer or Web file in Adobe InDesign.

However, the source formats are all so different. It’s not just the formatting choices that might be specific to the functions of an app, but the native format. All so different, and, while some apps allow you to read documents from other apps with greater or lesser accuracy (often lesser), quite often it requires a separate utility to accomplish the task.

Yes, there are areas where there’s some standardization, such as the “.doc” format for Microsoft Word. Newer versions of the app support a more universal “.docx” format instead, based on Open XML, intended to be an open format that would make the documents easier to read. The format was, in part, developed by Microsoft. That, however, doesn’t mean that all apps that handle text and spreadsheets will be able to read those documents with complete fidelity, or even partial fidelity.

It gets far worse when you have to deal with documents made in graphics software, such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign and even QuarkXPress. Say I have a document prepared with Adobe’s desktop publishing app. As a QuarkXPress user, I have to pay up to $200 to MarkzTools for an add-on (XTension) that allows me to read those files. It hardly makes sense for a single document, unless it’s part of a project that will more than cover the investment.

Sure, I understand that these proprietary formats are not just intended to lock you in to a specific app, though that’s one part of the equation. The other is that it might contain metadata and special formatting that the app publisher feels are most efficiently stored in a certain way. But it hardly works in the best interests of the end user, and it’s not the same as patenting one’s invention.

With open file formats, you should be able to read a file in a similar app, but not necessarily the one that created it. Sure, it’s possible some formatting will be lost because the source app contains special features that aren’t included in the target app. But maybe it would be possible to keep the custom formatting, but make that element of the document untouchable. You could still change the text, or the shape of a picture, but, unless you choose otherwise (in other words, drop the custom formats), that component of the document remains look but do not touch.

From a practical point of view, I don’t see this happening. So long as a developer is depending on proprietary features to earn their keep, it’s not likely that there will be much of a movement to further open the document standards. Besides, there are limited ways in which you can annotate or edit a PDF file, most particularly in an Adobe app. So maybe there’s not much incentive to change the way things are.

But that doesn’t mean customers aren’t being regularly inconvenienced. While I understand that an app developer would like to lock you in to their product in any way possible, you’d think that performance, interface, usability, and features customers want, would be sufficient to keep their user base. Having a proprietary file format that isn’t easily translated, or at best translated with imperfect accuracy, works against the customer. But that doesn’t stop software publishers from doing it anyway.

Is there any solution? I’m not at all certain there is. It’s not that customers are demanding the publishers of the apps they depend on work together to find a solution. It’s also true that handling different formats seems easier on the Mac. But it can be just an impossible situation on a smartphone or a tablet.

So perhaps I’m just talking to myself. But that’s nothing unusual.