The desktop (computer interface metaphor) is tired. What I’m asking in this post is does it have legs to continue into the future? If not, what’s next?

I had this thought while reading this article. The article is light on specifics and seems geared toward steering people to Mac. Still, it raised the question in my mind of why we are using an (albeit extended) desktop metaphor to do what we are doing with computers.

Why, for example, are we organizing music in folders? When was the last time you put your CDs in a manilla folder, in a drawer? Or movies for that matter? Or games? Or even documents? Does the desktop, and the workflow it enforces, fit our modern usage patterns any more or has it become a liability?

I say it doesn’t.

Regardless of the answer it’s easy to see how we’ve gotten to this point. Revolutions are hard to sell – evolution is insidious and incremental and doesn’t need to be sold. It just happens. When Microsoft established itself as the standard for PC operating systems years ago it ensured that the Windows idiom, and the desktop metaphor, would be the basis for all subsequent comparison and (serious) competition. That competition largely tried to evolve the desktop, not revolve it. Many companies tried, and failed (BeOS, OS/2 et al), to usurp the desktop through evolution – the product that Microsoft had developed, like it or not, was too good and too deeply entrenched to be threatened by imitators. The imitation of the desktop metaphor took place irrespective of the efficacy or suitability of that metaphor.

Incidentally, Microsoft had itself adapted and commercialized the desktop metaphor from Xerox PARC, a research division of a document-centric company, so it’s no surprise that the workflow of the interface is oriented to document creation, management and editing. Now, however, we do a lot more with our computers than simply create documents. We listen to music, we watch movies, we IM and surf the Web, we play games, we store and edit photos – the list of common tasks runs on and on. How many of these tasks map well to a desktop metaphor? I’d say not many.

Many people believe Apple has done a better job with their implementation of the desktop metaphor and I agree, yet I would suggest that this is because they have minimized the role of the desktop and focused the user experience on applications. When an application interface is used to access data, that data can be presented in a much more data-relevant manner. Accessing music through a well conceived music application, for example, can provide a very musicy experience. Same with pictures.

So the above is pretty anecdotal. I’ll back it up with something meaty if I get the time.

Extending the above I’m curious to know what an operating system would look like that makes data available only through data-relevant interfaces, or that dynamically changes the interface to fit the data that is being used or accessed by the user.