>You could then also criticize for example HTTP or even TCP for making you turn everything into "bytes".
If these were the only standard protocols that existed, and people were trying to tell me this was great because it's easy to compose different network applications, that criticism would be completely valid.
>Interpretation is up to the programs.
But because there are no standards beyond "stream of bytes", the chance that two independently written programs working with non-stream-like data can communicate directly is extremely low.