>That's not how innovation or success is measured in any way whatsoever. We had alchemy for centuries before Science, it was not right, nor was it good enough because it "just worked"

well the problem with alchemy was that it didn't work. The desktop does indeed work in the sense that people who are productive and do heavy work do utilise traditional desktop paradigms. At least I've never seen a highly productive developer who is into tons of touchscreens and arcane finger gestures.

I don't really see how the performance of well configured keyboard commands is supposed to be beaten by voice or touch input, because physically the former is just significantly faster, and importantly, composable.

I like Newtonian physics better as a comparison. Is it a perfectly accurate system that solves all problems? No, it doesn't handle very small things or very fast things. But it's a pretty good model for anything I need to do with it.

I do like some of the ideas here though - especially the fullscreen column mode. It feels like a more powerful and flexible version of the multitasking in macOS plus what's coming in iPad OS. I think it'd fit right in on Mac, if they could figure out an intuitive way to interact with that windowing model.

Not sold on their trackpad gestures. No issues with multi-finger gestures in general, but I like having 3-finger drag as a direct interaction with my content instead of taking 3-fingers to interact with the window manager. Definitely wouldn't want want to go back to the old double-tap-and-drag.

> I do like some of the ideas here though - especially the fullscreen column mode. It feels like a more powerful and flexible version of the multitasking in macOS plus what's coming in iPad OS. I think it'd fit right in on Mac, if they could figure out an intuitive way to interact with that windowing model.

There is a very mac-like feel to this concept. I think it would fit right in. I like that the Panels tell a strong story of incentives: That vertical space is important and at the same time that excessive and persistent menu bars are explicitly not important.

I also like your example about Newtonian Physics, I'll remember that one.

I like the other user's response to your first line.

> At least I've never seen a highly productive developer who is into tons of touchscreens and arcane finger gestures.

I totally agree, it would be silly and I imagine entertaining to watch for only just as long as it took to become incredibly annoyed by the scene. I do think, however, that we don't know what the peak of developer productivity is (nor if we should strive for it, but that's a different conversation). We don't know how humans should interact with computers and how tasks can potentially be represented by different software and hardware paradigms.

There are all kinds of keyboards. Chorded, the Space Cadet, Cannon Cat, European vs US. I don't know anything about Asian language keying but I imagine it would lend an interesting perspective as well. Bill Buxton has a gallery of input devices that is fascinating. [1]

Today, to generalize, the most productive people use the standard system of the Desktop. But they also extensively use paper and conversation and walls of post-its or whatever their shtick; in the future I imagine that we will bring computing capabilities to these more human styles of expression. That, I believe, will look and feel nothing like the Desktop.

[1]: https://www.microsoft.com/buxtoncollection

Sure, it's not how innovation is measured; self-evidently, something that hasn't changed much in decades is not innovative (anymore).

But it is how success is measured. The closer to ideal a product is, the less it needs to change. Think Coke, Excel, bicycles, SQL, etc. After an initial "Cambrian explosion" in each field, the product was stabilized and perfected.

I hate both Excel and SQL. Well, SQL isn't half-bad, but something like a composable GUI with a proper AWK plugin would be far better than that laggy and shitty "spreadsheet".

ooh, I've got to push back on that one. Just because I can't figure this idea out for myself, maybe this conversation will help.

> The closer to idea a product is, the less it needs to change.

Now that I read this line again I realize yes it is true, but let me push back against the implied claim. I don't think that the Desktop 'needs to change less' because it is 'close to an ideal product.'

I'll propose that the Desktop doesn't change because it is entrenched. There are plenty of good, and more importantly, clear ideas about how personal computing can be made both more powerful and easier for the end user. What we have now is the result of capitalistic incentives. What we should have is deep knowledge work machines and fantastic end user programming capabilities.

Fun conversation starters below, not relevant to the larger discussion, but just thoughts I have in response to your post. I'd enjoy a response just to the above paragraph.

Coke may be an ideal sugar drink, but that seems like a measly category in which to be an ideal product. I can imagine Coke consumption rates dropping over time. (To counter my point, I did find that Coke stock has risen 20% in the last 5 years, compared to S&P500 rising ~15% in the same time). I can imagine them dropping due to the rising popularity and variety of other daytime casual drinks. I can imagine them dropping due to the increasing public awareness of the mal-effects of sugar. I'm sure Coke the company will do fine, but they could have used their clout over the last 100 years to spearhead a global health campaign, and they didn't. So I don't think they are an ideal product which doesn't need to change.

Excel came about pretty quickly (I don't know the specific history of MS Excel) but considering its predecessors. Visicalc was a reason on its own to buy early desktop machines. I've heard of university departments buying early workstations just to permanently run visicalc. But that still doesn't make Excel ideal. Chris Granger has done a lot of work recently to evolve spreadsheets (more focused on programming, but they are intertwined). You could look at Light Table and Eve and say they were a failure because they didn't end up as a business, but I think that kind of product is inevitable in the near future as the access interface that average people will use computers with.

I think you're right about Bicycles. They are an incredible engineering development from almost every perspective. Maybe some pointers to the views Engelbart and more have about training wheels would be interesting to this conversation though. Those are a "thing" that stuck around for quite a while, and appear to not really help the learning of riding a bike. [1]

I don't know enough about SQL. SQLite is something like the most popular database in the world right?

[1]: http://worrydream.com/refs/Vannevar%20Bush%20Symposium%20-%2... search: "training wheels" there is one occurrence.