screenshots via AppleIf you’re an experienced computer user, you probably remember explaining to newbies how a desktop computer worked: Your photos should go in this folder; your documents in that one. You will need to use this application to open that image; that application to open this document.
It was all pretty confusing, to say the least. That is, until Apple’s mobile interface came along.
In 2010, when the iPhone interface began winning its legions of converts, it was apparent to me that the mobile operating system Apple had developed was a much more intuitive and simple experience than the desktop model which had existed for decades before it.
At the time, I wrote a post that asked, “Why Can’t PCs Work More Like iPhones?” In the piece, I noted that decades earlier computer-makers had dumped the command-line interface, which was incomprehensible to people without pocket-protectors, and replaced it with visual icons for files, folders and applications.
Yet that interface, which was called “windows, icons, menus, pointer,” or WIMP, didn’t seem to work either. What has worked is an intuitive experience called iOS. Tiny children could use an iPad. Centenarians could do it too. Even cats pawed it effectively, for cats.
Since Apple began seeing how easy it was for people to understand mobile, the company started adding new layers to the Mac desktop that borrowed cues from iOS. Within iOS, for example, you don’t need to know where your photos are stored, they simply show up in your photo applications. This is possible on the Mac, too.
Each time Apple announces updates to OSX, it borrows more functions from iOS.
This week was no exception. Dictation on the Mac, the ability to send Twitter messages directly from the desktop, the iconography of apps, notifications and messaging, are all appropriated from Apple iOS.
Microsoft is doing the same thing, too. The company’s Windows 8 interface, is a replica of the Windows Phone 7 system with beautifully designed square blocks that are much easier to navigate than the “Start” menu. Microsoft has also applied this design to the Xbox interface which is now in tens of millions of homes.
Eventually our desktops, smartphones, tablets and televisions, will all look relatively indistinguishable from their much younger mobile cousins. And just like of the erosion of the command-line input on early computers was a good thing. The death of the desktop operating system will be too.