Recently I’ve been thinking about just how goldarned stupid the desktop metaphor is. Think about it: you have a wide expanse of pixels, on which you can drag and drop files to your heart’s content. The thing is, it’s very, very inflexible, and doesn’t *really* help you get organized.
In fact, it’s too true to the metaphor – like your physical desktop, papers end up in piles, and similar or related papers tend to get grouped together. And just like your real desktop, the organizational scheme of your computers’ desktop is always one minor incident away from anarchy.
But the operating systems’ desktops (I’m talking to all three of you, Windows, Mac OS, and Linux…) are also less useful than your real desktop, in the following ways:
File names are usually truncated unless the file has focus.
This is just stupid. Right now, I’m looking at a spreadsheet on my desktop that’s pretty important to me. I know I have to work on it today (or at least by this weekend…). That’s why it’s on my desktop. Its name is “Communications_Calendar_2006.xls.”
But on my desktop, all I see is a (too large) icon and the label “Communicati…”. Same thing on my Mac! I happen to have several spreadsheets on my desktop, multi-tasker that I am. I have trouble discriminating one from another. The OS *should* make it as easy as possible for me to do this.
But because I can only view the contents of my desktop in one way, it’s not so easy. That is inflexible, insensitive design. The water bill from my municipality is on my “real” desktop right now…and I can clearly read the full label. Score one for paper.
If you crash, your desktop arrangement goes kablooey.
Many people organize the icons on their desktop according to an idiosyncratic spatial or semantic scheme: I’ve seen people put all their current desktop objects in one or another corner of the desktop; I’ve seen people line up their desktop icons in vertical or horizontal stacks; I’ve even seen people place their files so they follow the contours of their desktop wallpaper (itself a mixed metaphor if ever there was one…)
So what happens when your system hiccups and you have a “non-normal” shutdown. That’s right. Your carefully-thought out arrangement of desktop icons is no more. Everything is stupidly lined up from top left (or top right for you Mac folk). This is the equivalent of my 2-year-old climbing up on my chair when I’m not looking and playing with all the “nice daddy papers.” I expect ithis from Harriet; I shouldn’t get treated the same by my OS.
What’s with those big icons?
Another inflexible aspect of the desktop is the honkin’ big icons that I’m limited to on all three OS’s. C’mon. Why can’t *I* decide whether the desktop shows 32×32 monster icons with the file name underneath, or 8×8 icons with the (non-truncated please!) file name to the right? I can do this in the Finder/Explorer/File Manager….why not the desktop?
Current desktop add-ons are quite lame.
It’s obvious that the OS vendors – and Google – know the desktop is hokey. There’s been a proliferation of desktop add-ons in recent years. (Widgets and gadgets and sidebars, oh my!) Problem is, they’re not really solving for the *real* problems most users face. They just supply trifling little pieces of functionality. They’re not solving for users’ need for better organization and more efficient workflow.
You’re probably thinking “hey loudmouth, you got any better ideas?”
Yeah, I do. And that’s the topic for an upcoming post.
