File access on the iPhone and iPod touch has been notoriously limited without third-party apps -- and even then, it’s often cumbersome. But that may all be changing soon, thanks to the iPad.

Just Another iPad Blog has a followup to a report by AppleInsider which looks at the steps that Apple is taking to open up file sharing on its forthcoming iPad, due at the end of March. “Apple is dramatically rethinking how applications organize their documents on iPad,” AppleInsider writes, “leaving behind the jumbled file system and making file access between the iPad and desktop computers seamless.”

Computer geeks often take for granted that the average person can be stymied when it comes to figuring out where to save their files -- let alone ever being able to find them again. Apple’s goal with Mac OS X was to simplify that for the casual user, and in developing the iPhone OS they’ve taken simplicity to an extreme: iPhone apps save all of their documents within their own installation directory. That means if you delete the app, you’ll remove all of its related files. The iPad will also work in a similar manner.

Of course, offering software like iWork on the new iPad, Apple now is faced with bringing some of that desktop-level complexity to its mobile devices in order to be able to share those documents, or to bring files from the desktop to the iPad. A developer has leaked to AppleInsider word that iPad apps can now specify that their documents be shared wirelessly -- something that’s become common in many third-party iPhone apps, although it usually requires typing awkward IP addresses to mount the file sharing, making it more of a challenge for the casual user.

The new iPad model promises to allow your desktop computer to reveal each app’s document folder when sharing is enabled, allowing the user to wirelessly connect to their iPad and simply drag & drop document files between systems. As Apple CEO Steve Jobs showed off at last week’s media event, the iPad will then show a visual representation of all available documents, foregoing the traditional file hierarchy seen on desktop-class operating systems.

It remains to be seen if this new model will help alleviate lengthy backup times via iTunes for devices with a lot of files, but it sounds like Apple is finally taking file sharing on the iPhone OS more seriously at last.