Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity
This is a fun design exercise, but a couple things really <i>do</i> stand out to me as useful.<p>First, panels instead of windows -- a thousand times yes, please. Overlapping windows doesn&#x27;t provide any benefit. Making everything either full-screen or splitting the screen is so much better. There&#x27;s a reason so much software has moved to tabs and side panels instead of separate windows within the app.<p>Second:<p>&gt; <i>The desktop metaphor as the basis of computer interfaces is inefficient and outdated. Today, most of our data exists outsides of files and folders. The desktop worked great to get us started 40 years ago, but it was never built for the complexity and amount of work today.</i><p>I don&#x27;t like the author&#x27;s particular solution... but yes the idea of an actual &quot;desktop&quot; folder seems silly and antiquated now.<p><i>And</i> it&#x27;s about time that cloud content (whether file-based like Google Drive or content-based like Google Photos) got treated as a first-class citizen in the OS.<p>If the iOS Files app lets me treat my Google Drive as just another folder... why doesn&#x27;t Finder? Why do I have to install third-party software for that?