Desktop Computing hasn’t replaced the desktop (and shouldn’t)

Most of our desks are filled with frequently used items. Some bits might be more long-term, be it clutter, research or sentimental items.

However, “Computer as a Desktop” or “Desktop on the Computer” is a failed ideal of the early, by-gone days of computing. Simply: everything is not and cannot be on your personal computer *screen* let alone actually on the computer.

I’m a huge computing fan, I even PDF my readings for class (thanks to an old printer/scanner my wife’s new fancy-pants mac can’t use!). I annotate the PDFs & highlight them accordingly. I’m very document heavy, being a BachArts instead of a BachScience guy.

Compared to the image above, I’ve got only 3 piles of junk on my upper right & left corners: 2 book piles on the right & 1 ‘organizer’ on the left which holds everything from my keys & cellphone to pens, coupons & my external harddrive. And sticky-notes. Stickies can be moved, computer notes cannot so easily (yet). Cell phones & keys are much more ‘real’ objects, requiring separate spatial existence — like the kleenex box nearby. No computer will replace kleenex (I hope!).

So with all this, I’m not convinced the “desktop” metaphor is worthwhile, or even warranted. Sure there’s lots of files in folders on my computer, but (a) search has replaced some of that and (b) files and folders are in cabinets, not desks..

So, iTunes and other newer applications take on the library metaphor. You search a library; it is referenced, accessed and used. But that is just for an app, not a unifying theme between apps (though a good argument could and should be made why this shouldn’t be so!). User folders on Mac & Linux are now folder-lists of Documents, Media-types (pictures, music, videos).. Various netbook UI’s have ran with this as well. But none hold together any more than the files-in-folders theme. iTunes has it’s own folder inside your music folder. I know why this is, but shouldn’t there be a platform-independent format for these datasources?

And the desktop folder itself? Is there ever any real purpose to it? Most mobile platforms don’t have one and most linux geeks don’t place their files on the ‘desktop’. Microsoft Courier lacks a desktop as well, instead merging the desktop and the clipboard into one middle-bar for all things temporary (which most ppl use their desktop for).

Really looking at a normal, original desktop, it’s more a matter of objects which are acted upon with tools. Applications are the tool-set these days, but they fail to interact and avail themselves *on the desktop*. Desktops are loaded up with file *icons* not the file itself. Mac tries to maintain this file-window independence, but it’s just a jumble of windows overtop background pictures and icons. I cannot go from an open spreadsheet window and start making it pretty with a document design editor. These apps are mutually exclusive, and ruining any desktop metaphor.

All this critique is pointing towards a unified file format which all applications agree upon, and all have access to modify at anytime.

Clearly this is an idealism which won’t occur without limits placed. And such limits break the very nature of ‘general computing’ over which the Mac/Windows debate rages.

I’m a huge fan of limited and thereby differentiated computing: the workstation should not be running the same UI as a eJournal (Courier!). And neither of them are sufficient for the task of media center.

We once had a division of these 3 tiers with servers, desktops & mobile devices. Then WindowsNT was thrown on servers & XP(and NT variant!) was thrown on faux-tablets UMPC’s. This UI/codebase permeation is inverse of the ideal, where the low-level is the universal, and the high-level is specialized to the task.

2.0 has a chance with this for at least one front.