Stop Me If You’ve Seen This Before…
A colleague from my old company passed on a link to OS GUI timelines. You can see release dates, versions, and (of course) screenshots from different OS’es.
What’s fascinating is how little GUI’s have changed in 25 years. For example, look at these screenshots from Apple’s Lisa Office System. Check out the desktop in particular (below). How different is that than your current desktop? Not so much, I’d venture to guess.
(Click picture to see full-sized)
If you’ve read my post and followup about how I think the desktop metaphor is broken, you’ll understand my mixed feelings about this stability. Like I say in those posts, I think the desktop metaphor is tired. Both MS and Apple (and various versions of *nix, for that matter) have tried to improve the basic desktop metaphor, but at best their efforts have only made slight incremental improvements to the desktop experience.
I believe that the major players in the OS and productivity app spaces have a fundamental misunderstanding of what would improve the computer desktop. It’s about workflow and managing your “projects”, whether your project is a software application, the bowling league, or your kid’s carpool schedule.
October 29th, 2007 at 10:36 am
I’m curious to hear what alternatives you’ve seen or suggestions you have for alternatives to the desktop metaphor. What do you think either the next wave will be, or what do you think it SHOULD be?
I did take a look through your previous articles linked in this one, and there are definitely some interesting points there. But they tend to look at the issue on a lower level than my question here. What’s the next big thing in desktop computing GUI design?
October 29th, 2007 at 10:40 am
As an aside, I find it interesting that you published this article at virtually the same time that CodingHorror posted another article (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000963.html) about how users obsess over customizing their desktops. I wonder how user enjoyment of customizing and prettying-up desktops would carry-over into a nextgen look and feel / GUI paradigm.
March 10th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
I was asking myself the same as Vance while I read this post.
Will tangible interfaces be the next ‘big step’? Or are there steps in between? Or will the pc and the desktop methapor move in other directions?
regards from a first-time visitor