Imagine being able to just send a file from an Android phone to an iPhone without a centralized service and an Internet connection (i.e. like we could in the time of feature phones and early smartphones via Bluetooth)...
Please think of the shareholders and the lawful interceptors before you suggest something as subversive!
And would you say that this is comparable in terms of complexity with e.g. Airdrop or selecting "send via Bluetooth" and picking the recipient's device name?
Until last year, your web browser will usually download files. These days, you have to start an HTTP server. Which is actually easier, because FTP is a messy protocol.
> how do you create a network between the two
WiFi Direct has been built into phones for at least a decade.
> And would you say that this is comparable in terms of complexity with e.g. Airdrop or selecting "send via Bluetooth" and picking the recipient's device name?
On the sender side, the "send via" option can appear in the standard sharing app list. On the recipient's side, you may need to scan a QR code to finish the WiFi Direct connection. Starting the download should be as easy as having the sending app pretend to be a WiFi login portal so the phone automatically pops up the web page.
But if you're just sending files offline, there's always Nearby Share or plain old Bluetooth if the files are small enough.
Can, but does it? Defaults matter. And how would the receiver be notified that they should download some file via FTP?
As long as such a feature does not come preinstalled on smartphones, I'll continue considering this lack of previously commonplace functionality an intentional vendor lock-in.
But that presumes phones don't have a method to share files. They have that feature built in. It's called Nearby Share on Android and AirDrop on iOS. Both use some weird pairing mechanism and some form of Wi-Fi Direct to transfer files, but the interface is just a bit more integrated.
When Apple opens up Airdrop or when Google convinces Apple to pre-install Nearby Share, we'll get the universal file transfer we desperately need.
Nobody cares what we do, we know how to use our computers well, and will force them to do what we want them to do in ingenious ways, and we will share those ways with each other. The problem comes when one of us puts that solution into a user-friendly mobile package that can be installed and run with your elbow, and then somebody makes a tiktok about it.
That app is getting nuked. Maybe even the internal API that enabled that app is getting nuked. If it's a standard protocol, it's getting extended and extinguished. The people who made it and the people who host it are getting legal letters.
The fact that Google and Apple could quickly agree on a standard for both cross-platform Covid contact tracing and "stalker warnings" for "Find My" trackers, but not for cross-platform encrypted text messaging or an interoperable AirDrop extension, shows that it's purely a problem of incentives.