The nice thing about this system is that you get a clean separation between file typing AND default launching application. It's other OSes which have the "monolithic" structure you're talking about.
I think what iabervon is saying is that on a mac you usually just select a file and allow a specific program associated with the type, or the original program to open it. It's monolithic in the sense that the application used is tied to the file, whereas in linux (at least the traditional CLI) you would very frequently use a large variety of programs to operate on the same file.
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The nice thing about this system is that you get a clean separation between file typing AND default launching application. It's other OSes which have the "monolithic" structure you're talking about.
I think what iabervon is saying is that on a mac you usually just select a file and allow a specific program associated with the type, or the original program to open it. It's monolithic in the sense that the application used is tied to the file, whereas in linux (at least the traditional CLI) you would very frequently use a large variety of programs to operate on the same file.