The question about FAT32 was honest; thanks for the explanation. The rest of the comment (presenting storage in a normal, non-surprising way) is separate, and still stands.
Yeah, that's what irks me the most about iOS. Their whole idea of "the filesystem is an outdated concept" just never worked out and they refuse to give up on it. The greatest lie is that your iPad Pro can replace a PC, but you can't easily copy files from and to a flash drive. In the meantime, my wife's Surface accepts USB hardware just fine and she doesn't have to rely on awkward workarounds to get things done.