Can’t we just let the desktop die?

I remember the first time I saw Windows 95 at a friend’s house. Out of sheer excitement, I threw together something akin to a desktop on my Windows 3.11. The result was completely unusable, but I felt quite satisfied with myself. Today, almost 30 years later, the desktop is supposedly the central element in Windows or even macOS. Yet it’s hardly more useful than my Windows 3.11 mutation.

But this wasn’t always the case. In the days of Windows 95, most interactions were performed via the desktop. It contained my shortcuts to Corel Draw, Word or «Diablo». With the successor, Windows 98, I tried to sort out the increasing shortcut chaos on my desktop by creating labelled folders and categorising my programs and games that way. Primarily, I just wanted to see my fancy «Sleepy Hollow» wallpapers. And once more, as in my days as a young gamer, I lack both order and discipline digitally. After just a few weeks, my desktop already devolves into a lawless hellscape.

Bye-bye desktop, hello start menu

Windows XP came out in 2001. As a young adult, I had outgrown my childish desktops, complete with a «Pulp Fiction» theme. I migrated to the Start menu, which I casually opened using the Windows key. Only commoners use the mouse button for this. I neatly created folders and subfolders for all my applications (i.e. games), sorted by current titles, demos, etc. This strategy lasted a bit longer than my desktop folders, but as the number of programs grew, navigating the Start menu became increasingly tedious. If at some point you reach the fourth drop-down menu, it only takes one brief slip with the mouse for all menus to shut down, requiring you to start all over again.

The next chapter was called Windows Vista – I didn’t skip that one either. With it, widgets made their way into Microsoft’s operating system. At long last, life had returned to my directionless desktop. A CPU temperature display, weather and Post-its, I installed everything that had even a rudimentary use or at least looked cool. Even then, however, the Internet, or rather the browser, took on an increasingly central role in PC use. And as many widgets needed maintenance, the desktop once again took a back seat.

Windows 7 couldn’t assign any relevant meaning to the desktop either. It existed to provide a pretty background image, remaining visible only while my machine was booting up.

With Windows 8, the desktop even disappeared completely for a short time – at least, that’s how Microsoft envisioned it. But users who had installed this version on their PCs, like me, quickly found a workaround. This way, Windows booted directly to the desktop with the traditional Start menu again. Thus, nothing much changed surrounding our old, neglected app shortcut dump.

Windows’s appendix

We’ve now reached Windows 10, and the desktop is more useless than ever. To launch an app, I press the Windows key, type the first few letters and it shows me the app. I only use the desktop to bring up display settings with a right-click or to change my background for a product screenshot. Only when writing this text did I even notice that there are different shortcuts on both my desktops – I work with two monitors. But who cares? The desktop is more useless than even the numeric keypad on keyboards. Just kidding, Kevin’s crazy 😉.

But now, with Windows 11 just around the corner, first leaks indicate that Microsoft will bring back widgets. It isn’t yet clear whether they’ll be part of the taskbar like the new weather and news menus, or whether they’ll be located on the desktop like in Windows Vista. But even with this, I have little hope that the desktop will ever become more than a cubbyhole for forgotten shortcuts and unread PDFs. Maybe it’s just destiny.

Can the desktop be saved? Or are you one of those users who find it useful even now? Let me know by commenting below.