

Ask HN: When/Will IOS support file upload? - jjunkin

This is the only hole in my mobile web strategy right now. Apple won't support file upload on the iphone or ipad. I don't want to build an IOS app just to allow users to upload files. I cannot see why they can't come up with a solution for this. My question is will they ever? Searching on the web I can't seem to find any definitive answers as to why they don't allow uploads or if they ever will. Frustrating!
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retroafroman
I don't think they ever will. I think they see it as taking away from a
simple, "It just works" user experience. The reasons that I see it taking away
from the experience they want are:

1\. It would require users to think about how much room they have on the
device. Yes, you theoretically have to do this anyway, but with approx. half
of users never, ever connecting to iTunes, that is something they would have
to begin worrying about. Apple doesn't want people to have to think.

2\. It wouldn't be fast, especially for big files. Soon, people would be
complaining that their multi gigabyte movie rip is taking too long over the
air. I've done this with a jailbroken phone over wifi-it's a pain. People
would try it over 3G, or worse, EDGE.

And two non user experience reasons:

3\. It's scope creep. A phone or tablet isn't meant to replace a computer,
despite what everyone says. There isn't a solib business case for them to
spend the time to develop this or add in additional storage for all the
garbage people would acquire.

4\. It's another possible attack vector.

~~~
jjunkin
But they let apps upload photos, why not just let the web browser only upload
photos from the photo/camera section? It seems crazy that they can't just
allow photo upload. I am surprised that (many) others are not frustrated as
well. It forces me to write an app just to allow the user to upload photos.

