> The reason why the desktop hasn't changed much in 30 years is because it works.
Thank you. I am always amazed at why this is apparently so hard to understand to so many people. Perhaps most of them are young and the drive to innovate (for the sake of innovation) is simply so strong that it makes them ignore simple truths of life? In regards to desktop interface I so wish that many more companies and projects understood this already and stopped wasting our time with new fancy "ways to operate desktop"...
It's easy: the screen is a rectangle of pixels that needs to present information. We have inputs. For the inputs, the keyboard and mouse works the best. There are some other tools and there is some variation, but in essence, that's it. It is simply the best way to operate a desktop for a human. Out of those two initial variables there are only so many ways to organize the multitasking of that information, and we have figured it out already. The human design is not going to change for many more decades, the way information works in this universe is not going to change, the way point to things on a screen is not going to change, etc.
I guess humans, despite being very sophisticated neural networks (ok and perhaps some other architectures mixed into them), still do get stuck in local maxima, and knowing that tend to do that, they always try to get out of the maxima where they find themselves, just in case, to try to come up with a new maxima, to see and figure out if they have missed something. It makes sense and thank god for all those people trying to do this and innovate for the sake of innovation. But to me at least it seems very certainly that the desktop as it is today (and in many ways as it has been for 30 years) - is the global maxima of computing interface. We don't need another way, this is the best way already. Solutions to some problems are just created very early. Sometimes the traditional is the best.
Thank you. I am always amazed at why this is apparently so hard to understand to so many people. Perhaps most of them are young and the drive to innovate (for the sake of innovation) is simply so strong that it makes them ignore simple truths of life? In regards to desktop interface I so wish that many more companies and projects understood this already and stopped wasting our time with new fancy "ways to operate desktop"...
It's easy: the screen is a rectangle of pixels that needs to present information. We have inputs. For the inputs, the keyboard and mouse works the best. There are some other tools and there is some variation, but in essence, that's it. It is simply the best way to operate a desktop for a human. Out of those two initial variables there are only so many ways to organize the multitasking of that information, and we have figured it out already. The human design is not going to change for many more decades, the way information works in this universe is not going to change, the way point to things on a screen is not going to change, etc.
I guess humans, despite being very sophisticated neural networks (ok and perhaps some other architectures mixed into them), still do get stuck in local maxima, and knowing that tend to do that, they always try to get out of the maxima where they find themselves, just in case, to try to come up with a new maxima, to see and figure out if they have missed something. It makes sense and thank god for all those people trying to do this and innovate for the sake of innovation. But to me at least it seems very certainly that the desktop as it is today (and in many ways as it has been for 30 years) - is the global maxima of computing interface. We don't need another way, this is the best way already. Solutions to some problems are just created very early. Sometimes the traditional is the best.