Mastodawn

The anti-Free aspects of the design of the "app" paradigm are:
Ⓐ Your screen space:
A company controls those pixels. The #desktopMetaphor is the root of this #enshittifiability, with "windows" defining a portal between your attention and the informatic space unilaterally controlled by the developer.
An alternative is how GNU and the shell work, where the human invokes the function, which humbly takes no more time than necessary and exits, leaving just what was requested.
#HCI #Informatics

Ozzie D, NP-hard

Jul 8, 2025

#PetPeeve: I hate that "Music" is one of the standard home folders on desktop computers. I love music, but I want it to be "Audio" -- not all audio is music (plus "audio" pairs better with "video"). When was this default established, in #MacOS X 10.0, #WinNT, earlier? (I think NextStep or BeOS might have had a "Sounds" folder.) Now, seemingly every #desktop uses this default: #Windows, #Mac, #FreeDesktop environments (#GNOME, #KDE), are there any exceptions? Like the #DesktopMetaphor itself, we're stuck with it, even though it chafes.

#GUI #UserInterface #Legacy #OldManYellsAtCloud
#UnreasonableExpectations

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Karl Voit

Jul 5, 2025

@amoroso @lproven Well, I can think of many ways how to improve #computers. 😉

https://karl-voit.at/2017/02/10/evolution-of-systems/
https://karl-voit.at/2018/08/25/deskop-metaphor/
https://karl-voit.at/2019/10/05/innovation/
https://karl-voit.at/2018/10/17/ted-nelson-interview/

Once you've got rid of #filenames, #folders, #applications, ... you will find much room for coming up with something fundamental new. This
time without adapting humans for the computer but the otherwise round: creating the ultimate digital tool for the humans.

This can never be reached by an evolutionary process like suggested in the article.

I disagree with the judgment that we tried hard.

There's no incentive for a revolution. No one is able to start this process. We're pretty much stuck. 🫩

This is not the top of the IT industry. We're still in its stone age and made a situation where any fundamental change is a downside somehow. A local optimum but never ever the global one, if you like.

#PIM #Desktop #DesktopMetaphor