Why is iPad file management so rickety?

[Padcatt]

I've posted very recently regarding moving files off my iPad using various methods. I've finally found a method which works-ish, but it's been fraught with fails and inaccuracies. Transfers from iPad to removable USB Media is unreliable and inaccurate to the extent that it requires me to check the transfer at the file level. Connecting directly to a mac and using finder to drag my files to the mac is better, but often the connection goes stale, requiring me to unmount then remount the iPad. People on this forum have said that even using iCloud - which is apparently what Tim Apple wants us to do - has its own difficulties.

In my decades of computering, file management has been arguably the single most important aspect:
if you can't manipulate and move your files, it doesn't matter what cool, sexy things the computer can do.

So why has apple decided to make iPad file management so rickety? Why have they gone from what made them great in the first place - taking the complex and making it simple - to making managing files on the iPad such a Kafkaesque experience? To understand the tone of this post, please understand that I have been working hard at rescuing my files from my iPad "pro" for the past week, and I expect to spend the rest of my day working at it, and possibly into the coming week.

My progress is incremental at best. Using the iPad for me has been near paradise; file management on the iPad has been the sulphur pit of hell. Do more recent iPad "Pro" models handle file management better than this 2nd-Gen 12.9" iPad "pro?"

Thank you for any thoughts or info on this.

 

[LannyC]

I've found it's best to treat the iPad as a handy media consumption device, and leave content creation to a real computer with a real mouse and keyboard. I've given up trying to create anything but email and forum posts on my iPad. The tools are just too weak and/or awkward.

 

[Padcatt]

LannyC - I 100% relate to that!

I'm going to try a hybrid strategy of keeping very few files on the iPad and will xfer them to a real mac after my drawing session is over.

"Too weak and awkward" is an apt characterization of the iPad platform. In fairness, I truly love creating on iPad, which is partly why it's so easy to create hundreds of GB worth of files you can't back up!

It's as though Apple has constructed the iPad to be an inescapable files terrarium.

 

[twerppoet]

Creatives using the iPad as a professional or semi-professional drawing tool are common. I suggest poking around on YouTube, Twitch and other tech video/podcast/blog sites to see how they manage their files. It might give you some ideas.

 

[BikeFlagAZ]

I make videos (using LumaFusion) and in a typical day might shoot 100 still photos and shoot 2-50 gigabytes of video.
I do 100% of my workflow on a 2017 iPad Pro 12.9 with 512 Gb of memory. I don’t even use a mouse or external monitor, just an Apple Pencil. I boot my PC once a year to do my taxes.

I use an Apple camera adapter (Lightning port) to read and write files from micro-sd cards. I can, using a powered USB hub and some dongles, read and write to/from external hard disks, but rarely do so as my 512 GB micro-sd cards can handle my needs, and are inexpensive and take up no room.

For file management, I mostly use the files app, but sometimes use Documents by Readdle or File Explorer Pro.

If you can give some examples of where you are having issues, I might have faced them before and know a workaround. I do find myself wondering what Apple is thinking sometimes.