There are many of us who don't do social
    photography and use desktop photographic
    software and Windows' built in image
    management stuff.

I fall into a different category. I do some 'social photography' as a means of personal promotion, but almost never with my iPhone's camera. Virtually 100% of the photos I upload to, say, Facebook and Instagram came out of one of my dedicated cameras, like my DSLR or digital rangefinder.

All of my photos are shot in camera RAW, and I manage them in Lightroom. It wouldn't be possible for me to use built-in image management tools on OS X or Windows, or manage the photos through Finder or Explorer, respectively, since I need non-destructive photo editing.

Lightroom provides non-destructive photo editing, and basically everything else I need, and provides it through their .lrcat catalog files, which, interestingly, are actually just sqlite3 databases.