Desktop Follies
09:09 Monday, 15 December 2025
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Words: 1369
If they could choose, about 3 times as many Americans would want to live in past as in future
Back in the day, when we had to walk six miles to school, in the snow, uphill, both ways, we only had 13-15 inches, sometimes less, of glass to peer into cyberspace through.
These days, people have multiple large screens on their desktops. Even I have two, this 27" Benq and the 14" MacBook Pro.
This abundance of real estate offers some advantage, but also imposes some demands, and "window management" is one of them. And it's not a lot of fun. They can host distractions, cause confusion, and add cognitive load to what otherwise might be simple tasks.
I recall what an improvement "integrated software" was in the early days of micro-computing. I think Lotus 1-2-3 is regarded as the "first" integrated software program, where more than one "productivity" feature could be used without launching another program. I never used Lotus 1-2-3, so I don't know what it was like. It's "suite" of "applications" were spreadsheet, database and business graphics. To my mind, that's only two applications, as there's not a lot of difference between a spreadsheet and a database. Heresy, I know. But I don't think it was a truly relational database that you could build applications on. But I could be wrong.
The Incredible Jack for the Apple II pre-dated Lotus 1-2-3 by about a year, and it was widely regarded as an "integrated software" application. But it was mostly a word processor with some sophisticated mail merge and calculation capabilities.
AppleWorks was, for me, the truly first "integrated software" application, and I believe I bought version 1.0 when I upgraded from my Apple ][+ to an Apple //e in 1984. It was based on a program for the Apple III called /// EZ Pieces released by Haba Systems, but developed by Rupert Lissner who later developed the version that became AppleWorks, released by Apple Computer, Inc.
The early 8-bit and 16-bit micros were, for the most part, single-tasking computers. The operating systems and memory architectures weren't really capable of genuine preemptive multi-tasking. There were "terminate and stay resident" programs that you could summon and perform some function while appearing to remain in the "main" program you were running, but that wasn't genuine multi-tasking, and the degree of "integration" between the TSR app and the main app was little to, mostly, none.
What was interesting about AppleWorks and /// EZ Pieces was that Lissner appeared to borrow the idea of the desktop and the clipboard from the Apple Lisa. (The Mac hadn't been released yet, as Lissner was developing /// EZ Pieces.) What those programs afforded was an application that appeared to allow you to work on several documents in different applications (file types, really) all at once, without closing or saving one file before switching to another.
That was the "desktop" feature, essentially a list of files, or documents, that you loaded into memory and could switch between at will. The number and size of these documents was limited by available memory, but even a 128K Apple II offered 51K of desktop "space" which could host several small documents that were either text documents, database files, or spreadsheets. I found it incredibly productive as a naval officer.
Memory on the Apple II could be expanded to a megabyte or more using memory expansion cards, and AppleWorks evolved to exploit expanded memory with more, and larger, files open on the "desktop."
The "clipboard" feature allowed sharing data between applications. You could either "copy" data to the clipboard, or "print" to the clipboard, and then "paste" that information into another document, which didn't have to be the same kind.
("Printing" spreadsheet cells to the clipboard resulted in a table that could be imported into a word processing document.)
But all this activity occurred on a single screen. A 9" one in the case of the Apple //c "ET" monitor. There was only one "window," but all of this data, which later included graphics.
Now we have gigabytes of RAM, terabytes of storage, ridiculous amounts of processor speed and compute power, and the responsibility of managing all these resources in a way that allows us to actually get something done. As a result, we have programs to manage our programs! These features are even built into the OS.
I recall one of the supposed appeals of the iPad was that it was going to be a one-window, single-task device. But people, mostly tech bloggers I think, who are most inclined to opine endlessly on such matters, demanded windows and multi-tasking. And now my iPad is as confusing to operate as my MBP. Oops! I accidentally touched a corner of the screen and now this app is in a window! Oops! I slid my finger over and now I've got two narrow windows that I have no idea how to get rid of!
I liked iPad OS the way it was.
I'm a dinosaur. I run Safari at full-screen (Width, not "full-screen." I like seeing the menu bar.) This is usually fine, but a lot of websites assume I want the text to run the full width of the display. Reader view helps here.
I have dozens of tabs open in Safari, and I should just close them and rely on History. I could use the MBP in clamshell mode, but I discovered I liked being able to export the marmot from Tinderbox and just slide over ("down" before I rearranged my "real" desktop) and click on the ForkLift favorites to upload it to the server.
Screwing around with this stuff is just so much friction.
I like what MacOS Guru does (linked above):
I am a one document, one application at a time, kind of guy. Boring, but that is the way my mind works.
I am fond of the following keyboard commands:
1
⌘-tab: to switch between open applications.2
⌘-`: to move between open windows in an application.3
⌘-H: Hide the current application and switch to the one last used.4
⌥⌘-H Hide all the other applications running.5
⌃-tab: To move to the tab on the right.6
⇧⌃-tab: To move to the tab on the left.I need to work on my self-discipline here. (Though "⌘-H" doesn't seem to work the way he says it does on my machine.) Quitting apps I'm not using. Rely on History, not innumerable tabs. Hide apps I'm not using right now. All these windows consume resources. Sure, we have an abundance of resources, but does that mean we should waste them? With all this speed, shouldn't quitting and launching apps be nearly as fast as leaving them open? If it's not, why not?
Preview is another app that I need to develop some discipline using. Closing files as soon as I'm done with them, like the new auto insurance card. That's another app that accumulates endless tabs and windows if I'm not closing them.
This even came up during the Tinderbox meetup. Though some of this looks kind of cool. I do use Tabs within a single Tinderbox file. Each tab is a separate view of the outline. On This Day in the Marmot is open in its own tab so I can inspect it each day and make sure the early entries are set up to export correctly. The first tab is the current month's archive. A middle tab overlooks the entire document, so I can get to some part of the archive or infrastructure relatively quickly.
But all of this is what makes the past seem more appealing. I'm not running the Worldwide Military Command and Control System (WWMCS) here. I don't need a "dashboard" monitoring the state of Marmot Industries. But I've got all this "stuff," all this "capability," and I guess I have some anxiety that I'm not getting my money's worth if I'm not using it.
Anyway, that's my problem. And as "problems" go, it's hardly worth the time and effort I've put into this post. But it was on my mind.
Hopefully, now it's off.
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