Scott Jenson
@scottjenson@social.coop  ·  activity timestamp last week

Desktop #UX has been stagnant for well over a decade. We've stopped innovating, despite desktops having huge advantages over mobile in input, windowing, and file systems. There's so much potential for improvement, from better file management, to better history, to new windowing approaches.

Besides cross-device features (like MacOS Continuity and shared clipboard), has any truly desktop-ONLY feature meaningfully changed your workflow? My theory is that nothing has but please correct me.
Paco Hope #resist
@paco@infosec.exchange replied  ·  activity timestamp 6 days ago
@scottjenson I’m not sure if this rises to the level you’re talking about, but the virtualization of graphics displays is pretty thorough and pretty profound. I routinely can open a web browser and manage a system remotely. All the way up to things I used to require physical presence for: updating hardware BIOS and such.

I mention that BIOS case because I think it’s the hardest use case the tech solves. Regular people see this in the ubiquity of streaming games, streaming screen sharing, and tech support taking over a computer and fixing something that used to require physical presence.

So the UX I use hasn’t changed except that sharing it with various people has become trivially easy, and that is a big win. It changes how we do work and collaborate.
デイヴ
@deivudesu@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 6 days ago
@scottjenson Very true, very sad. I do suspect that Mobile (and companies like Apple, trying to shoehorn their mobile OS into their desktop OS for the better part of a decade) is only part of the equation. The other part is probably the web: most desktops nowadays are glorified web browser container, which removes a lot of the incentive for improving that container…

But it is a pity all the same…
Julik Tarkhanov
@julik@ruby.social replied  ·  activity timestamp last week
@scottjenson My theory is that due to the commoditisation, consumeriosation, stupidification and enshittification at Apple they actually went to dismantle their own excellent UI ecosystem in favor of... shitty manager/product initiatives. The whole "Move/Delete" instead of "Save as" and "cloud based navigation services" disaster, the removal of proxy icons... it was undoubtedly regressive.
Ivan Molodetskikh
@YaLTeR@mastodon.online replied  ·  activity timestamp last week
@scottjenson PaperWM [1] introduced me to scrollable tiling, which changed my workflow so meaningfully that I ended up writing an entire new window manager focused entirely around scrollable tiling [2].

One could argue it looks similar to the windowing on something like Android, but no, on the desktop it's sufficiently different and (imo) improves desktop-specific workflows a lot.

[1]: https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM
[2]: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri
heracl.es
@heracles@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp last week
@scottjenson Command-bar Launchers, like Alfred, Albert, Wox and the like. Not all are alike, fewer feel fast on older devices. Near immediate access to any folder of files as long as I remember a few letters of their name, or launching any software is indispensable for my style of computing. That and any ephemeral shell scripts. Both make the desktop feel as a whole artifact rather than a bunch of disassociated apps.
Jochen Wolters
@jochenwolters@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 7 days ago
@scottjenson @heracles Indeed! Apple seems to copy some decent ideas for Spotlight. That feature is not nearly as streamlined as, say, Alfred or LaunchBar. Just being able to explicitly assign shortcuts to particular “targets” can be a game changer. Then again, Spotlight might strike a reasonable balance between powerful search and low adoption threshold for non-power users. 🤔… (1/2)
Jochen Wolters
@jochenwolters@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 7 days ago

TBH, I prefer it when OS makers don’t even attempt to integrate such productivity tools directly into the OS.

For example, all those window management features in macOS Sequoia are neat. They do not even come close to what a third-party tool like Magnet offers. And yet, here they are, all these useless-to-me controls for tiling, etc. across the macOS core UI, adding cognitive load something as simple as the Window menus in an application. 🤷‍♂️ (2/2)
Scott Jenson
@scottjenson@social.coop replied  ·  activity timestamp last week

And before anyone replies "No one cares, mobile won" that's missing the point. OF COURSE MOBILE WON! I'm not debating that. But mobile won consumers, they didn't win productivity. How many companies today only use phones or tablets? The sad truth is that we can't quit our desktops because they are so damn good at what they do. So why have we abandoned them?
Ruud Steltenpool
@steltenpower@social.edu.nl replied  ·  activity timestamp last week
@scottjenson The desktop is actually a laptop most of the time now, but I very much agree. For example, especially since 'mobile-first' became a thing, screen estate is not put to great use, especially on screens much bigger than a laptop. Giant screens give new interaction possibilities, e.g. instead of buttons why not a pallette of simple examples to drag/swipe onto your canvas?