I'm using iOS and macOS. On macOS I have the folder that syncs experience (I'm using Synology Drive, but Dropbox works the same way), on iOS I have the "browse remote files" experience but I can pin files I always want to keep available which is what I want.
Right. It's similar to Windows and Android experience. Thing is, for the latter, I don't want to "pin files I always want to keep available" - I want them to actually exist as files in the shared storage, so other apps can operate on them as if on regular files.
(Unfortunately, both mobile platforms themselves are actively fighting this approach, and instead encourage apps to keep data in private databases and never expose them as actual files.)
I get the pain point, but databases are a much better data model for multi-device, intermittently-connected sync. Filesystems just aren’t designed to be async and conflict-resolving.
> databases are a much better data model for multi-device
Fyi, a filesystem is a database too.
And acid SQL databases ain't much better at that domain from my perspective.
The problem on mobile is more that the other apps don’t get access to the general file system, and/or prefer to import the files anyway.
My only major complaint with gdrive on Mac (besides Apple and Google but I have to deal with them for work) is that you can’t set the storage folder to an external location like with windows. I don’t want to be constantly loading/unloading media on my internal storage, but I don’t have a choice without janky work arounds. It’s a very frustratingly “Apple” thing to do.