At a very basic level -- separate handling of text vs. binary. In some operating systems, some files were record-oriented and some were not, allowing the kernel to optimize record access in a database file, for instance. The Burroughs large systems used the disk as a backing store for objects in main memory, which were typed (in proto-OO fashion) and some of the type constraints were enforced at the hardware level. For instance it was impossible to execute a word tagged as "data".

One feature that was implemented in the Amiga OS, BeOS, and just about nowhere else is the concept of datatypes. Third-party software could register OS-wide readers and writers for their file formats, allowing files of that type to be consumed or produced by any application.

PowerShell lets you construct pipelines of typed objects with fields and methods, not just untyped dumb text.