>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.
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.