was it like a launcher before the winkey menu had search
it just feels completely vestigial
like the computer desktop was a metaphor for an actual desktop 🤔

kind of obsessed with the pressure sensitive buttons on the dualshock 2 & 3
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was it like a launcher before the winkey menu had search
it just feels completely vestigial
like the computer desktop was a metaphor for an actual desktop 🤔
following the metaphor, it would seem to be a place to store documents you're working on right now, and the tools you use every day. (or at least shortcuts to those things.)
I'd think this was more important in the days of really slow spinners, where it might have been a chore to search or navigate through folders to get to a file stored properly
and like most real life desktops, I believe, they usually just become cluttered messes
It's the ghost haunting contemporary flat design: the ghost of skeumorphism.
that's my second favorite spectre to be haunted by
we never used it (unlike on Mac, which we did use in the same time period)
so it's hard to say
certainly we have seen people use it as a launcher, and an awful lot of apps do put themselves on it
honestly, it was a derivative design that copied the features of the Mac without a unifying vision, and if you go back to win 3.1 and compare it to Mac System 6 that's easy to see
the "trying to look like Mac" history is probably a big part of it, I wasn't thinking about windows that far back but it definitely feels like a lot of things are stapled together in ways that don't really fit but have to be there to avoid breaking something someone relies on
yeah. it can always be a bit hard to tell, because if these things don't happen to speak to you, it's hard to guess what the treasure map in someone else's head is. software is more than the collection of its features, it's the purpose that motivates it, and that purpose isn't always evident if you aren't part of it. but anyway that's our best guess.
how is it different from on a Mac in your opinion? no shade, just curious, I've never had trouble using it the same way on both
also as far as it's being vestigial: it might be, but if it is, it's like a gallbladder filled with toxic user grievances, based on how removing it went in Windows 8 rofl
honestly it's probably mostly vibes and I'm also kind of comparing classic mac os to windows 10 (or more accurately, I'm complaining about how using windows 10 feels today in comparison to how I remember it feeling to use macs between 10 and 30 years ago 😅) but I think the main things are how opening a folder would always open its own window and the size and position of each folder's window were persistent, so it kind of encouraged arranging them spatially, which carried over to how icons weren't as obviously on a grid (I think the length of filenames or how long each line was before it wrapped contributed to this? icons tended to be more spaced out even when they were on a grid) so it felt more natural to arrange icons spatially too, in folders and on the desktop. plus if I remember correctly the desktop was basically the actual root level, like you'd never be looking at it in a Finder window so things like list view or whatever weren't an option, and the only things there by default were the hard drive, the trash, and any disks or discs you put in. I know os x isn't like that but off the top of my head I can't name a single specific behaviour of it (kind of similar to windows 7, it's "in the middle" between my formative years and now)
also yeah as much as I never actually use the desktop it would be terrible if they got rid of it. I feel like windows is in a constant state of "the last version was better" despite maintaining an absurd level of backwards compatibility and kind of regardless of whether the changes are good or not (or they always pair less visible good changes with more visible bad changes 🤔)
Haha all you had to say was “I’m comparing it to Classic Mac OS” and I understand just fine. technically the spatial Finder made it into OS X, but it was heavily deprioritized, and despite a few years of Classic Mac devotees raising hell whenever it broke, it’s just a pain to stay in. If you open a Finder window and click the menu items to hide the toolbar and the sidebar, it still does go into spatial mode, opening a new window for each folder, remembering position and size, etc. but if you use a menu item to open a new window at Home or something, the new window has the toolbar and sidebar again. I think there might be a way to coax it into being spatial by default? I’ve never had the spoons to swim uphill that long lol
I bet if you got John Siracusa started he’d start telling you all the other details they broke over the years lol
I collect old Macs for fun but only my earliest computing memories involve using them to get anything useful done, they’re mostly toys now.
Man I giggled a little when Apple called the Vision Pro they just announced “spatial computing”. Oh now you care about spatial computing! Lol
oh, haha, that would have saved a lot of typing
I got really excited for a minute when I saw another chost mention "spatial window manager" on the apple goggles, like finally we're going to get another peek into the timeline where bumptop took off instead of flat design 😂