[HN Gopher] Are we stuck with the same Desktop UX forever? [video]
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Are we stuck with the same Desktop UX forever? [video]
Author : joelkesler
Score : 67 points
Date : 2025-12-13 18:39 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| scottjenson wrote:
| I've given dozens of talks, but this one seems to have struck a
| chord, as it's my most popular video in quite a while. It's got
| over 14k views in less than a day.
|
| I'm excited so many people are interested in desktop UX!
| az09mugen wrote:
| Thanks for that nice talk, it felt like a breeze of fresh air
| with basic & simple yet powerful but alas "forgotten" concepts
| of UX.
|
| Will look into your other talks.
| calmbonsai wrote:
| I concur though per my earlier post I do feel "desktop
| stagnation" is inevitable and we're already there. You were
| channeling Don Norman https://jnd.org/ in the best of ways.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It was quite interesting.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| Fantastic talk, I found myself nodding in agreement a lot. In
| my research on next-generation desktop interfaces, I was
| referred to Ink & Switch as well and man, I sure wish they were
| hiring. I missed out on the Xerox and Bell Labs eras. I'm also
| reading this book, "Inventing the Future" by John Buck that
| details early Apple (there's no reason the Jonathan Computer
| wouldn't sell like hotcakes today, IMHO).
|
| In my downtime I'm working on my future computing concept[1].
| The direction I'm going for the UI is context awareness and the
| desktop being more of an endless canvas. I need to flesh out my
| ideas into code one of these days.
|
| P.S. Just learned we're on the same Mastodon server, that's
| dope.
|
| ---
|
| [1]: https://systemsoft.works
| joelkesler wrote:
| Great talk about the future of desktop user-interfaces.
|
| "...Scott Jenson gives examples of how focusing on UX -- instead
| of UI -- frees us to think bigger. This is especially true for
| the desktop, where the user experience has so much potential to
| grow well beyond its current interaction models. The desktop UX
| is certainly not dead, and this talk suggests some future
| directions we could take."
|
| "Scott Jenson has been a leader in UX design and strategic
| planning for over 35 years. He was the first member of Apple's
| Human Interface group in the late '80s, and has since held key
| roles at several major tech companies. He served as Director of
| Product Design for Symbian in London, managed Mobile UX design at
| Google, and was Creative Director at frog design in San
| Francisco. He returned to Google to do UX research for Android
| and is now a UX strategist in the open-source community for
| Mastodon and Home Assistant."
| rolph wrote:
| problem is with pushing a UX at users and enforcing that model
| when the user changes it to something comfortable when you should
| be looking at what the users are throwing away, and what they are
| replacing it with.
|
| MS is a prime example, dont do what MS has been doing, remember
| whos hardware it actually is, remain aware that what a developer,
| and a board room understands as improvement, is not experienced
| in the same way by average retail consumers.
| fortyseven wrote:
| You know, sometimes things just work. They get whittled way at
| until we end up with a very refined endpoint. Just look at cell
| phones. Black rectangles as far as the eye can see. For good
| reason. I'm not saying don't explore new avenues ( foldables,
| etc. ), but it's perfectly fine to come to settle into a metaphor
| that just works.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| The Windows 95-XP taskbar is good. Everything else has been
| downhill.
| pdonis wrote:
| I use Trinity Desktop on Linux because it's basically the
| same as the Windows 95-XP taskbar interface, and has no plans
| to change.
| analogpixel wrote:
| Why didn't Star Trek ever tackle the big issues, like them
| constantly updating the LCARS interface every few episodes to
| make it better, or having Geordi La Forge re-writing the warp
| core controllers in Rust?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Because it's a fantasy space opera show that has nothing to do
| with reality
| thaumaturgy wrote:
| Because, something that a lot of tech-obsessed Trek fans never
| seem to really come to terms with, is that Trek didn't
| fetishize technology.
|
| In the Trek universe, LCARS wasn't getting continuous UI
| updates because they would have advanced, culturally, to a
| point where they recognized that continuous UI updates are
| frustrating for users. They would have invested the time and
| research effort required to better understand the right kind of
| interface for the given devices, and then... just built that.
| And, sure, it probably would get updates from time to time, but
| nothing like the way we do things now.
|
| Because the way we do things now is immature. It's driven often
| by individual developers' needs to leave their fingerprints on
| something, to be able to say, "this project is now MY project",
| to be able to use it as a portfolio item that helps them get a
| bigger paycheck in the future.
|
| Likewise, Geordi was regularly shown to be making constant
| improvements to the ship's systems. If I remember right, some
| of his designs were picked up by Starfleet and integrated into
| other ships. He took risks, too, like experimental propulsion
| upgrades. But, each time, it was an upgrade in service of
| better meeting some present or future mission objective. Geordi
| _might_ have rewritten some software modules in whatever
| counted as a "language" in that universe at some point, but if
| he had done so, he would have done extensive testing and tried
| very hard to do it in a way that wouldn't've disrupted ship
| operations, and he would only do so if it gained some kind of
| improvement that directly impacted the success or safety of the
| whole ship.
|
| Really cool technology is a key component of the Trek universe,
| but Trek isn't _about_ technology. It 's about people.
| Technology is just a thing that's in the background, and,
| sometimes, becomes a part of the story -- when it impacts some
| people in the story.
| amelius wrote:
| I still wonder why not everybody was lingering in the
| holodeck all the time.
|
| (equivalent of people being glued to their smartphones today)
|
| (Related) This is one explanation for the Fermi paradox:
| Alien species may isolate themselves in virtual worlds
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
| RedNifre wrote:
| The lack of capitalism meant that the holodeck program
| authors had no need to optimize their programs for user
| retention to show them more ads. So much fewer people
| suffer from holodeck addiction in Star Trek than are glued
| to their screens in our world.
| d3Xt3r wrote:
| Most likely because this was a star ship (or space station)
| with a limited number of personnel, all of whom have fixed
| duties that _need_ to be done. You simply can 't afford to
| waste your time away in holodecks.
|
| The people we saw on screen most of the time also held
| important positions on the ship (especially the bridge, or
| engineering) and you can't expect them to just waste
| significant chunks of time.
|
| Also, don't forget that these people actually _like_ their
| jobs. They got there because they sincerely wanted to, out
| of personal interest and drive, and not because of societal
| pressures like in our present world. They already figured
| out universal basic income and are living in an advanced
| self-sufficient society, so they don 't even need a job to
| earn money or live a decent life - these people are doing
| their jobs because of their pure, raw passion for that
| field.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Isn't it probably just that they don't really have money in
| Star Trek so there is no contract promising amazing advances
| in the LCARS if we just pay this person or company to revamp
| it? If someone has money to be made from something they will
| always want to convince you the new thing is what you need.
| krapp wrote:
| Remember that in Star Trek humans have evolved beyond the
| desire to work for money or personal gain, so everyone just
| volunteers their time, and somehow this just always works.
| jfengel wrote:
| Most of Trek's tech is just a way to move the story along.
| Transporters were introduced to avoid having to land a
| shuttle. Warp drive is just a way to get to the next story.
| Communicators relay plot points.
|
| Stories which focus on them as technology are nearly always
| boring. "Oh no the transporter broke... Yay we fixed it".
| krapp wrote:
| >In the Trek universe, LCARS wasn't getting continuous UI
| updates because they would have advanced, culturally, to a
| point where they recognized that continuous UI updates are
| frustrating for users.
|
| Not to be "that guy" but LCARS wasn't getting continuous UI
| updates because that would have cost the production team
| money and for TNG at least would have often required
| rebuilding physical sets. It does get updated between series
| because as part of setting the design language for that
| series.
|
| And Geordi was shown constantly making improvements to the
| ship's systems because he had to be shown "doing engineer
| stuff."
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > In the Trek universe, LCARS wasn't getting continuous UI
| updates
|
| In the Trek universe, LCARS was continuously _generating_ UI
| updates for each user, because AI coding had reached the
| point that it no longer needs specific direction, and it
| responds autonomously to needs the system itself identifies.
| bena wrote:
| LCARS was technically a self-adapting system that was
| personalized to a degree per user. So it was continuously
| updating itself. But in a way to reduce user frustration.
|
| Now, this is really because LCARS is "Stage Direction: Riker
| hits some buttons and stuff happens".
| calmbonsai wrote:
| Trek needs to visibly "sci-fi-up" extant tech in order to have
| the _poetic narrative license_ to tell its present-day
| parables.
|
| Things just need to "look futuristic". The don't actually need
| to have practical function outside whatever narrative
| constraints are imposed in order to provide pace and tension to
| the story.
|
| I forget who said it first, but "Warp is really the speed of
| plot".
| Findecanor wrote:
| I have often thought that Star Trek is supposed to show a
| future in which computer technology and user interfaces have
| evolved to a _steady state_ that don 't need to change that
| much, and which is superior to our own in ways that we don't
| yet understand. And because it hasn't been invented yet, the
| show does not invent it either.
|
| It is for the audience to _imagine_ that those printed
| transparencies back-lit with light bulbs behind coloured gel
| are the most intuitive, easy to use, precise user interfaces
| that the actors pretend that they are.
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| Man, I should hope that the warp core controllers on the USS
| Enterprise were not written in C.
|
| On the other hand, if the writers of Star Trek The Next
| Generation were writing the show now, rather than 35-40 years
| ago - and therefore had a more expansive understanding of
| computer technology and were writing for an audience that could
| be relied upon to understand computers better than was actually
| the case - maybe there would've been more episodes involving
| dealing with the details of Future Sci-Fi Computer Systems in
| ways a programmer today might find recognizable.
|
| Heck, maybe this is in fact the case for the recently-written
| episodes of Star Trek coming out in the past few years (that
| seem to be much less popular than TNG, probably because the
| entire media environment around broadcast television has
| changed drastically since TNG was made). Someone who writes for
| television today is more likely to have had the experience of
| taking a Python class in middle school than anyone writing for
| television decades ago (before Python existed), and maybe
| something of that experience might make it into an episode of
| television sci-fi.
|
| As an additional point, my recollection is that the LCARS
| interface _did_ in fact look slightly different over time - in
| early TNG seasons it was more orange-y, and in later seasons
| /Voyager/the TNG movies it generally had more of a purple
| tinge. Maybe we can attribute this in-universe to a Federation-
| wide UX redesign (imagine throwing in a scene where Barclay and
| La Forge are walking down a corridor having a friendly argument
| about whether the new redesign is better or worse immediately
| before a Red Alert that starts the main plot of the episode!).
| From a television production standpoint, we can attribute this
| to things like "the set designers were actually trying to
| suggest the passage of time and technology changing in the
| context of the show", or "the set designers wanted to have fun
| making a new thing" or "over the period of time that the
| 80s/90s incarnations of Star Trek were being made, television
| VFX technology itself was advancing rapidly and people wanted
| to try out new things that were not previously possible" - all
| of which have implications for real-world technology as well as
| fake television sci-fi technology.
| RedNifre wrote:
| Because the LCARS GUI is only for simple recurring tasks, so
| it's easy to find an optimal interface.
|
| Complex tasks are done vibe coding style, like La Forge vibe
| video editing a recording to find an alien:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Faiu360W7Q
|
| I do wonder if conversational interfaces will put an end to our
| GUI churn eventually...
| rzerowan wrote:
| Mostly i believe its that the writers envisioned and were able
| to wrldbuildinsucha way that the tech was not a subject but was
| rather a part of the scenery/background with the main object
| being the people and their relationships. Additionally in some
| cases where alien tech was interfaced with the characters inthe
| storysome UI/code rewites were written in, for example in DS9
| where the Cardassian interfaces/AI are frustrating to Chief
| O'Brien and his efforts to remedy/upgrade such gets a recurring
| role in the story.
|
| Conversly recent versions have taken the view of foregrounding
| tech aidied with flashy CGI to handwave through a lot.Basically
| using it as a plot device when the writing is weak.
| ares623 wrote:
| Are we stuck with the same toothbrush UX forever?
| LeFantome wrote:
| I feel like toothbrush UX has improved quite a bit.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Toothbrush UX is the same today as it was when we were hunter
| gatherers: use an abrasive tool to ablate plaque from the
| teeth and gums without removing enamel
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMuTG6fOMCg
|
| The variety of form factors offered are the only difference
| jrowen wrote:
| Yes, whittling down a stick is pretty much the same
| experience as using an electric toothbrush. Or those weird
| mouthguard things they have now.
|
| I don't think most people would find this degree of
| reduction helpful.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| > Yes, whittling down a stick is pretty much the same
| experience as using an electric toothbrush
|
| Correct? I agree with this precisely but assume you're
| writing it sarcastically
|
| From the point of view of the starting state of the mouth
| to the end state of the mouth the USER EXPERIENCE is the
| same: clean teeth
|
| The FORM FACTOR is different: Electric version means ONLY
| that I don't move my arm
|
| "Most people" can't do multiplication in their head so
| I'm not looking to them to understand
| echoangle wrote:
| That's just not what user experience means, two products
| having the same start and end state doesn't mean the user
| experience is the same. Imagine two tools, one a CLI and
| one a GUI, which both let you do the same thing. Would
| you say that they by definition have the same user
| experience?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| If you drew both brushing processes as a UML diagram the
| variance would be trivial
|
| Now compare that variance to the variance options given
| with machine and computing UX options
|
| you'll see clearly that one (toothbrushing) is less than
| one stdev different in steps and components for the
| median use case and one (computing) is nearly infinite
| variance (no stable stdev) between median use case steps
| and components.
|
| The fact that the latter state space manifold is
| available but the action space is constrained inside a
| local minima is an indictment on the capacity for action
| space traversal by humans.
|
| This is reflected again with what is a point action space
| (physically ablate plaque with abrasive) in the possible
| state space of teeth cleaning for example: chemical
| only/non ablative, replace teeth entirely every month,
| remove teeth and eat paste, etc...
|
| So yes I collapsed that complexity into calling it "UX"
| which classically can be described via UML
| mrob wrote:
| As somebody who's tried using a miswak [0] teeth-cleaning
| twig out of curiosity, I can say with confidence it's not
| the same experience as using a modern toothbrush. It's
| capable of cleaning your teeth effectively, but it's slower
| and more difficult than a modern toothbrush. The angle of
| the bristles makes a huge difference. When the bristles
| face forward like with a teeth-cleaning twig your lips get
| in the the way a lot more. Sideways bristles are easier to
| use.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miswak
| yearolinuxdsktp wrote:
| It's changed, but is a wash:
|
| On the positive side, my electronic toothbrush allows me to
| avoid excessive pressure via real-time green/red light.
|
| On the negative side, it guilt trips me with a sad face emoji
| any time my brushing time is under 2 minutes.
| calmbonsai wrote:
| I can imagine some sort of car-wash-like partial mouth
| insertion interface (think "smart cleaner/retainer"), but it
| would be cost-prohibitive and, likely, not offer any
| appreciable cleaning benefits.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| I was going to say "are we stuck with the same bicycle UX
| forever".
|
| Because we've been stuck with the same bicycle UX for like 150
| years now.
|
| Sometimes shit just works right, just about straight out of the
| gate.
| esafak wrote:
| This is what bicycles originally looked like: https://en.wiki
| pedia.org/wiki/Velocipede#/media/File:Velocip...
| esafak wrote:
| There are electric-, ultrasonic-, mouthpiece-, and irrigating
| toothbrushes...
|
| Maybe the experience has not changed for the average person,
| but alternatives are out there.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| The computer form factor hasn't changed since the mainframe: look
| into a screen for where to give input, select visual icons via a
| pointer, type text via keyboard into a text entry box, hit an
| action button, recieve result, repeat
|
| it's just all gotten miniaturized
|
| Humans have outright rejected all other possible computer form
| factors presented to them to date including:
|
| Purely NLP with no screen
|
| head worn augmented reality
|
| contact lenses,
|
| head worn virtual reality
|
| implanted touch sensors
|
| etc...
|
| Every other possible form factor gets shit on, on this website
| and in every other technology newspaper.
|
| This is despite almost a century of a attempts at doing all those
| and making zero progress in sustained consumer penetration.
|
| Had people liked those form factors they would've been invested
| in them early on, such that they would develop the same way the
| laptops and iPads and iPhones and desktops have evolved.
|
| However nobody's even interested at any type of scale in the
| early days of AR for example.
|
| I have a litany of augmented and virtual reality devices
| scattered around my home and work that are incredibly compelling
| technology - but are totally seen as straight up dogshit from the
| consumer perspective.
|
| Like everything it's not a machine problem, it's a human people
| in society problem
| nkrisc wrote:
| > Purely NLP with no screen
|
| Cumbersome and slow with horrible failure recovery. Great if it
| works, huge pain in the ass if it doesn't. Useless for any
| visual task.
|
| > head worn augmented reality
|
| Completely useless if what you're doing doesn't involve
| "augmenting reality" (editing a text document), which probably
| describes _most_ tasks that the average person is using a
| computer for.
|
| > contact lenses
|
| Effectively impossible to use for some portion of the
| population.
|
| > head worn virtual reality
|
| Completely isolates you from your surroundings (most people
| don't like that) and difficult to use for people who wear
| glasses. Nevermind that currently they're heavy, expensive, and
| not particularly portable.
|
| > implanted sensors
|
| That's going to be a very hard sell for the vast majority of
| people. Also pretty useless for what most people want to do
| with computers.
|
| The reason these different form factors haven't caught on is
| because they're pretty shit right now and not even useful to
| most people.
|
| The standard desktop environment isn't perfect, but it's good
| and versatile enough for what most people need to do with a
| computer.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| And most computers were entirely shit in the 1950s
|
| yet here we are today
|
| You must've missed the point: people invested in desktop
| computers when they were shitty vacuum tubes that blow up.
|
| That still hasn't happened for any other user experience or
| interface.
|
| > it's good and versatile enough for what most people need to
| do with a computer
|
| Exactly correct! Like I said it's a limitation of the human
| society, the capabilities and expectations of regular people
| are so low and diffuse that there is not enough collective
| intelligence to manage a complex interface that would
| measurably improve your abilities.
|
| Said another way, it's the same as if a baby could never
| "graduate" from Duplo blocks to Lego because lego blocks are
| too complicated
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I do not see laptop computers as the same form factor as
| mainframes. At. All.
|
| Even more, I don't see phones as the same form factor as
| mainframes.
| mcswell wrote:
| Since mainframes, you say. Well, sonny, when I first learned
| programming on a mainframe, we had punch cards and fan-fold
| printouts. Nothing beats that, eh?
| immibis wrote:
| Phone UIs are still screen UIs, but they are not desktop UIs,
| and that's not because of the shape of the device.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Tell me how that's not a phone and a desktop:
|
| https://www.instagram.com/reel/DPtvpkSExfA/
| calmbonsai wrote:
| For desktops, basically, yes. And that's OK.
|
| Take any other praxis that's reached the 'appliance' stage that
| you use in your daily life from washing machines, ovens, coffee
| makers, cars, smartphones, flip-phones, televisions, toilets,
| vacuums, microwaves, refrigerators, ranges, etc.
|
| It takes ~30 years to optimize the UX to make it "appliance-
| worthy" and then everything afterwards consists of edge-case
| features, personalization, or regulatory compliance.
|
| Desktop Computers are no exception.
| Hammershaft wrote:
| All of the other examples you gave are products constrained by
| physical reality with a small set of countable use-cases. I
| don't think computer operating systems are simply mature
| appliance-like products that have been optimized down their
| current design. I think there is a lot of potential that hasn't
| been realized because the very few players in the operating
| system space have been been hill-climbing towards a local
| maxima set by path dependence 40 years ago.
| calmbonsai wrote:
| To be precise, we're talking about "Desktop Computers" and
| not the more generic "information appliances".
|
| For example, we're not remotely close to having a
| standardized "watch form-factor" appliance interface.
|
| Physical reality is _always_ a constraint. In this case,
| keyboard+display+speaker+mouse+arms-length-
| proximity+stationary. If you add /remove/alter _any_ of those
| 6 constraints, then there's plenty of room for innovation,
| but those constraints _define_ a desktop computer.
| pegasus wrote:
| That's just the thing, desktops computers have always been
| in an important way the antithesis of a specialized
| appliance, a materialization of Turing's dream of the
| Universal Machine. It's only in recent years that this
| universality has come under threat, in the name of safety.
| mrob wrote:
| I can think of two big improvements to desktop GUIs:
|
| 1. Incremental narrowing for all selection tasks like the Helm
| [0] extension for Emacs.
|
| Whenever there is a list of choices, all choices should be
| displayed, and this list should be filterable in real time by
| typing. This should go further than what Helm provides, e.g.
| you should be able to filter a partially filtered list in a
| different way. No matter how complex your filtering, all
| results should appear within 10 ms or so. This should include
| things like full text search of all local documents on the
| machine. This will probably require extensive indexing, so it
| needs to be tightly integrated with all software so the indexes
| stay in sync with the data.
|
| 2. Pervasive support for mouse gestures.
|
| This effectively increases the number of mouse buttons. Some
| tasks are fastest with keyboard, and some are fastest with
| mouse, but switching between the two costs time. Increasing the
| effective number of buttons increases the number of tasks that
| are fastest with mouse and reduces need for switching.
|
| [0] https://emacs-helm.github.io/helm/
| sprash wrote:
| Unpopular take: Windows 95 was the peak of Desktop UX.
|
| GUI elements were easily distinguishable from content and there
| was 100% consistency down to the last little detail (e.g. right
| click always gave you a meaningful context menu). The innovations
| after that are tiny in comparison and more opinionated (things
| like macos making the taskbar obsolete with the introduction of
| Expose).
| fragmede wrote:
| Heh, the number of points you've probably gotten for that
| comment, I don't think that it's that unpopular. Win 98 was my
| jam but it looks hella dated today, but as you said, buttons
| were clearly marked, but also menus were navigatible via
| keyboard, soms support for themes and custom coloring, UIs were
| designable via a GUI builder in VB or Visual Studio using MFC
| which was very resource friendly compared to using Electron
| today. Because smartphones and tablets, but even the wide
| variety of screen sizes also didn't exist so it was a simpler
| time. I can't believe how much of a step back Electron is for
| UI creation compared to MFC, but that wasn't cross-platform and
| usually elements were absolute positioned instead of the
| relative resizable layout that's required today.
| mattkevan wrote:
| Really interesting. Going to have to watch in detail.
|
| I'm in the process of designing an os interface that tries to
| move beyond the current desktop metaphor or the mobile grid of
| apps.
|
| Instead it's going to use 'frames' of content that are acted on
| by capabilities that provide functionality. Very much inspired by
| Newton OS, HyperCard and the early, pre-Web thinking around
| hypermedia.
|
| A newton-like content soup combined with a persistent LLM
| intelligence layer, RAG and knowledge graphs could provide a
| powerful way to create, connect and manage content that breaks
| out of the standard document model.
| linguae wrote:
| I enjoyed this talk, and I want to learn more about the concept
| of "learning loops" for interface design.
|
| Personally, I wish there were a champion of desktop usability
| like how Apple was in the 1980s and 1990s. I feel that Microsoft,
| Apple, and Google lost the plot in the 2010s due to two factors:
| (1) the rise of mobile and Web computing, and (2) the realization
| that software platforms are excellent platforms for milking users
| for cash via pushing ads and services upon a captive audience. To
| elaborate on the first point, UI elements from mobile and Web
| computing have been applied to desktops even when they are not
| effective, probably to save development costs, and probably since
| mobile and Web UI elements are seen as "modern" compared to an
| "old-fashioned" desktop. The result is a degraded desktop
| experience in 2025 compared to 2009 when Windows 7 and Snow
| Leopard were released. It's hamburger windows, title bars
| becoming toolbars (making it harder to identify areas to drag
| windows), hidden scroll bars, and memory-hungry Electron apps
| galore, plus pushy notifications, nag screens, and ads for
| services.
|
| I don't foresee any innovation from Microsoft, Apple, or Google
| in desktop computing that doesn't have strings attached for
| monetization purposes.
|
| The open-source world is better positioned to make productive
| desktops, but without coordinated efforts, it seems like herding
| cats, and it seems that one must cobble together a system instead
| of having a system that works as coherently as the Mac or
| Windows.
|
| With that said, I won't be too negative. KDE and GNOME are
| consistent when sticking to Qt/GTK applications, respectively,
| and there are good desktop Linux distributions out there.
| gtowey wrote:
| It's because companies are no longer run by engineers. The MBAs
| and accountants are in charge and they could care less about
| making good products.
|
| At Microsoft, Satya Nadella has an engineering background, but
| it seems like he didn't spend much time as an engineer before
| getting an MBA and playing the management advancement game.
|
| Our industry isn't what it used to be and I'm not sure it ever
| could.
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| It's great to hear from someone who thinks these people still
| care! It has rarely been my experience, but I haven't been
| everywhere yet.
| linguae wrote:
| I feel a major shift happened in the 2010s. The tech industry
| became less about making the world a better place through
| technology, and more about how to best leverage power to make
| as much money as possible, making a world a better place be
| damned.
|
| This also came at a time when tech went from being considered
| a nerdy obsession to tech being a prestigious career choice
| much like how law and medicine are viewed.
|
| Tech went from being a sideshow to the main show. The problem
| is once tech became the main show, this attracts the money-
| and career-driven rather than the ones passionate about
| technology. It's bad enough working with mercenary coworkers,
| but when mercenaries become managers and executives, they are
| now the boss, and if the passionate don't meet their bosses'
| expectations, they are fired.
|
| I left the industry and I am now a tenure-track community
| college professor, though I do research during my winter and
| summer breaks. I think there are still niches where a deep
| love for computing without being overly concerned about
| "stock line go up" metrics can still lead to good products
| and sustainable, if small, businesses.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> The tech industry became less about making the world a
| better place through technology_
|
| When the hell was even that?
| eek2121 wrote:
| For the same reason we don't reinvent the wheel. Or perhaps, the
| same reason we don't constantly change things like a vehicle. It
| works well, and introducing something new means a learning curve
| that 99% of folks won't want to deal with, so at that point, you
| are designing something new for the other 1% of folks willing to
| tackle it. Unless it's an amazing concept, it won't take off.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| > Or perhaps, the same reason we don't constantly change things
| like a vehicle.
|
| Are we stuck with the same brake pedal UX forever?
| whatever1 wrote:
| Desktop is dead. Gamers will move to consoles and Valve-like
| platforms. Rest of productivity is done on a single window
| browser anyway. Llms will accelerate this
|
| Coders are the only ones who still should be interested in
| desktop UX, but even in that segment many just need a terminal
| window.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| For content consumption sure.
|
| For content creation though, desktop still rules.
| immibis wrote:
| Sounds like a dead market. Nobody needs to create content any
| more now that we have AI.
| linguae wrote:
| Is it dead because people don't want the desktop, or is it dead
| because Big Tech won't invest in the desktop beyond what's
| necessary for their business?
|
| Whether intentional or not, it seems like the trend is
| increasingly locked-down devices running locked-down software,
| and I'm also disturbed by the prospect of Big Tech gobbling up
| hardware (see the RAM shortage, for example), making it
| unaffordable for regular people, and then renting this hardware
| back to us in the form of cloud services.
|
| It's disturbing and I wish we could stop this.
| xnx wrote:
| Desktop is all about collaboration and interaction with other
| apps. The ideal of every contemporary SaaS is that you can
| never download your "files" so you stay locked in.
| hollerith wrote:
| >productivity is done on a single window browser anyway
|
| When I need to get productive, sometimes I _disable_ the
| browser to stop myself from wasting time on the web.
| whatever1 wrote:
| And you likely open the browser that happens to be called VS
| Code, Figma etc
| hollerith wrote:
| The point though is that my vscode window does not have an
| address bar I can use to visit Youtube or Pornhub at any
| time.
|
| I guess the larger point is that you need a desktop to run
| vscode or Figma, so the desktop is not dead.
| sprash wrote:
| It's not dead. It's being murdered. Microsoft, Apple, Gnome and
| KDE are making the experience worse with each update.
| Productive work becomes a chore. And the last thing we need is
| more experiments. We need more performance, responsiveness,
| consistency and less latency. Everything got worse on all 4
| points for every desktop environment despite hardware getting
| faster by several orders of magnitude.
|
| This also means that I heavily disagree with one of the points
| of the presenter. We should not use the next gen hardware to
| develop for the future Desktop. This is the most nonsensical
| thing I heard all day. We need to focus on the basics.
| silisili wrote:
| I agree with this. I remember when Gnome 3 came out, there
| were a lot of legitimate complaints that were handwaved away
| by the developers as "doesn't work well on a mobile
| interface", despite Gnome having approximately zero install
| cases onto anything mobile. AFAICT that probably hasn't
| changed, all these years later.
| migueldeicaza wrote:
| Scrubbed the talk, saw "M$" in a slide, flipped the bozo bit
| immibis wrote:
| I don't _want_ to see what any of today 's companies would come
| up with to replace the desktop. Microsoft has tried a few times
| and they all sucked.
| xnx wrote:
| I felt rage baited when he crossed out Jakob Nielsen and promoted
| Ed Zitron (https://youtu.be/1fZTOjd_bOQt=1852). Bad AI is not
| good UI, but objecting based on AI being "not ethically trained"
| and "burning the planet" aren't great reasons.
| GaryBluto wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fZTOjd_bOQ&t=1852s You're
| missing the ampersand.
|
| It's really strange how he spins off on this mini-rant about AI
| ethics towards the end. I clicked on a video about UI design.
| xnx wrote:
| Same. AI is absolutely the future of human computer
| interaction (exactly the article from Jakob Nielsen that he
| crossed out). Even the father of WIMP, Douglas Engelbart,
| thought it was flawed: ""Here's the language they're
| proposing: You point to something and grunt". AI finally
| gives us the chance to instruct computers as humans.
| jhhh wrote:
| I understand the desire to want to fix user pain points. There
| are plenty to choose from. I think the problem is that most of
| the UI changes don't seem to fix any particular issue I have.
| They are just different, and when some changes do create even
| more problems there's never any configuration to disable them.
| You're trying to create a perfect, coherent system for everyone
| absent the ability to configure it to our liking. He even
| mentioned how unpopular making things configurable is in the UI
| community.
|
| A perfect pain point example was mentioned in the video: Text
| selection on mobile is trash. But each app seems to have
| different solutions, even from the same developer. Google
| Messages doesn't allow any text selection of content below an
| entire message. Some other apps have opted in to a 'smart' text
| select which when you select text will guess and randomly group
| select adjacent words. And lastly, some apps will only ever
| select a single word when you double tap which seemed to be the
| standard on mobile for a long time. All of this is inconsistent
| and often I'll want to do something like look up a word and
| realize oh I can't select the word at all (G message), or the
| system 'smartly' selected 4 words instead, or that it did what I
| want and actually just picked one word. Each application designer
| decided they wanted to make their own change and made the whole
| system fragmented and worse overall.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| [delayed]
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