On Sat, Jan 21, 2017 at 11:47 AM, Tony Baldwin <tonybald...@gmx.com> wrote: > My experience has been that this whole "MTP" thing, instead of just mounting > phones like they used to, as a storage device, has been a real horror show,
It's less of a horror show than having two operating systems trying to write to the same block device at the same time. Or having to disable access to the block device from one OS, which can really mess up applications trying to access it. What happens on your computer if you are running an application where the binary itself or the data it needs is on a USB device and you pull the device out? Now imagine that describing everything you're running. > I've given up on getting it to work consistently and have installed dropbox > on my phone and desktop to move stuff back and forth, which also has its > headaches and limitations, but is consistent, and works.. That's essentially what MTP does (only without using an third location to sync against). Well, probably closer to using FTP to files to/from the device, only without using TCP/IP. (Oh, just refreshing and apparently one can run MTP over TCP/IP, though I suspect that implementations being talked about here are still direct USB connections.) Any fancy GUI for navigating file systems should function as well for an MTP attached device as it would for say, an FTP service. >From what I've heard, MS had 3rd tier engineers develop MTP, and even they are a little ashamed of it. But, it's still the primary protocol out there. So, the idea of MTP is sound, but the particular design, and the various implementations, well... there is probably room for improvement. But it's unlikely to happen with anything less than full industry support. mrc
