Let's see, the usability tests showed that a lot of people stared at the windows desktop on startup and were at a loss.
Given that they were copying the macintosh what, a decade after the original mac's release, you'd think they might actually look at some user tests of people using a mac.
I'm sure they would find that given that the only obvious thing on the screen is a computer icon, they would click on it, and tada, there they are now staring at a window filled with what is IN their computer.
The metaphor is simple, and it works.
Now more than a decade later, and we are still stuck with this idiocy that the desktop is a totally useless wasteland for auto-installed shortcuts and crap, while the start menu of an average user's system has, not application names, but a mile long list of company names to play the "now who the hell made my text editor?" game.
Xp desktop shows "My Computer", at least it is an option to do so.
Frankly, reading this article gave me nightmarish flashbacks about the time I had to use OS X. Closing down applications was a real pain, if I remember correctly. Clicking the "X" doesn't close them, only hide them. You have to unhide them and find the "Exit" (or whatever) in the file menu to actually close them for good (not the file menu in the window, mind you, but the one in the useless "desktop transforms into application window").
So please don't refer to OS X as an usability icon, definitely not when the question is how to shut down things.
Given that they were copying the macintosh what, a decade after the original mac's release, you'd think they might actually look at some user tests of people using a mac.
I'm sure they would find that given that the only obvious thing on the screen is a computer icon, they would click on it, and tada, there they are now staring at a window filled with what is IN their computer.
The metaphor is simple, and it works.
Now more than a decade later, and we are still stuck with this idiocy that the desktop is a totally useless wasteland for auto-installed shortcuts and crap, while the start menu of an average user's system has, not application names, but a mile long list of company names to play the "now who the hell made my text editor?" game.