We'd have hacks to support all of our OS level concepts like writable, readable, listable, executable, hidden, system, archive. How would someone implement tail, what about keeping something open for writing? I'm not sure any of this stuff is thought through except by OS writers. If we suddenly put this task to device manufacturers, would tail suddenly never work again? And if that doesn't work, what kind of monstrosity will happen if we simply attempt to start windows or linux on it?

And even though our OSes have bugs, at least we can reasonably debug and patch them. The same cannot be said of completely proprietary and invisible firmware.