The modern OS desktop is a crime against humanity

https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/05/opinion_column_modern_os_desktop/

by CHB0403085482 • 4 years ago

19 13 4 years ago

This article is sort of missing the point. Rupert is inadvertently right. The desktop metaphor is done, as in finished - nobody cares. Files on a table is over. There was a point where my desktop got too messy in university and I went and turned off icons on it altogether and I never looked back. Google didn't even bother with the concept in android; files go to a magical box in the sky and you never see them, and some phones ship without a file explorer altogether. With the prevalence of OneDrive and other services, they do this on the home computer as well now too. It's the default in Office 365, probably one of the only apps a lot of people use on Windows now other than a browser. My workplace has all storage set to OneDrive by default, and I have to fight the computer to store a file locally, and the reality is that as much as I dislike it, it's invisible and you don't even notice.

Rupert also fails to comment on how most people are primarily using the browser anyway. He didn't even use the word in the article. Oh, sure, it's annoying to users that the flavors of windows change over time, but chrome hasn't changed and that's fine. It's probably more of a bother to people when facebook or youtube has a redesign every few years.

And we know this to be true because the statistics support it. Computer literacy didn't continue to drastically rise as time passed. The reality is that the medium got out of the way of the message, and nobody spends time looking at windows anymore. They don't have cute sample songs bundled with the OS anymore (how will future generations discover Mr. Scruff and his record label now??), the wallpapers kind of suck, but people don't change them anymore anyway, or anything else for that matter (you can hide the Cortana search bar but everyone I know doesn't even bother to do that). Do kids these days even know what a screensaver is? Invoking 95 like it's a peak of UX is completely missing the point. Windows, and OSX, and others, will continue to trend towards becoming invisible, like air, and will get out of the way.

greenbit• 4 years ago

Maybe the point is, please stop the mutations. If every couple of years someone came to your house while you were out, and completely rearranged everything, I'd bet you'd be pretty annoyed, mainly because all the time you invested in learning the prior layout was unilaterally and without consultation suddenly turned into wasted time. And then, as you're re-learning how to do basic stuff you already knew how to do, and it strikes you that in a couple of seasons, this learning effort will also be wasted, you will be annoyed a Second Time.

The OS should indeed "get out of the way". The best way to do that would be to stop getting in our faces, bc fashion.

superchroma3• 4 years ago

Windows used to be your house. Now it's like your storage garage. Worrying about the carpet in the storage garage is missing the point.

Jtype2• 4 years ago

You ignore the points made in the article by pointing out how more people are consumers on their electronic devices today. You point out how this change affected mobile devices and browser based consumption. However computer users are not a monolithic group. This misses the forest for the trees. Sure, a higher percentage of computer device users are there only for consumption, and can easily have their needs met by a modern smartphone or chromebook, but that's not who the article is about.

The article is focused on how the limitations and changes made for consumption computing has affected the OS design and negatively impacted the users who actually need a desktop or laptop, either to produce or as hobby machines. If the OS is constantly changing and degrading, it may not matter that much to those who only really need a smartphone or tablet, but it has a huge impact on the rest.

Desktop and laptop sales have been dropping for years as more consumers realize that their needs can be met by a mobile device, tablet, or chromebook. Sure the changes probably don't mean much to that market, but that market is fading. Making unnecessary changes which interfere with the UI impact the hardcore users, who will be the base of desktop/laptop users in the near future.

Your argument is essentially that since the changes have little impact to those who don't care, that it shouldn't matter to the rest of us. That's pretty dismissive of a large group of users, and a rather useless observation.

beecafe• 4 years ago

Its the desktop and laptop users who will go extinct. Changes which bother them really don't matter at all.

jollybean• 4 years ago

Hell no, I want my files back now.

Not on my desktop, but in a place I can find and organize them.

Not some magical mystery place that Apple wants to put them.

superchroma3• 4 years ago

As a power user, a data hoarder and a child of the 90's who grew up with a computer all of my own to learn holistically, I hear you. I still run Windows 7 on my own PC. We're a minority, though, that's all I'm saying. When computers were new, people like us got to set the tone as we were early adopters, but now that computers are ubiquitous, we've been flooded out with the computer illiterate masses, and it seems Microsoft and Apple find it easier to cater to them as the bottom line.

wildrhythms• 4 years ago

The reason for the unholy UX mess with no signs of converging is, of course, marketing [...] [Windows Explorer] thinks "Share with Skype" is the second most important file operation, right after Open.

Well, the reason for this is not 'marketing' solely; what's happening is internally at every gigantic company like Microsoft is teams are competing for users. The 7DAU line must always go up for our little product area (like Skype). So product managers engage in their own internal political wars to sprinkle the damn Skype entrypoint everywhere in hopes that some users will accidentally click on it every now and then and keep that magical 7DAU line going up before they secure their promotion and parachute to the next company and do the same thing.

If a product manager asked the engineers and user experience folks "Should we put a Skype entrypoint in the file manager?" I'm sure they will say "No. But let's look at the data... it also says no."

The modern OS desktop is a crime against humanity

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