To be fair, this graphical shell functionality has been part of Mathematica for at least the past 7-8 years. In fact, I would argue that within Mathematica, one can work with a much larger number of formats and data sources.
I think its important that this is coming to the FOSS world though. I agree that Mathematica/MATLAB are brilliant in this regard, but you (or your employer) has to shell out the big bucks for them, so if you want to collaborate with others who aren't on your platform you're almost certainly out of luck.
