1984 New York Times Article Says The Whole 'Windows' Fad Is Over
Here's something to remember as you read gadget reviews and tech news.
The best part of a new Verge story on the history of Windows is a link to a 1984 New York Times article headlined "VALUE OF WINDOWING IS QUESTIONED."
In it, Erik Sanberg-Diment suggests that Windows and the whole concept of graphical interfaces is just "pretentious pep talk of the software industry."
He starts his article asking: " Does anyone do windows any more?… The answer is, not really."
He ends with this slam and confident prediction:
In the somewhat pretentious pep talk of the software industry, windowing was to emulate the familiar, comforting desktop, a cluttered one at that. But it is extremely difficult to use efficiently a system that displays bits and pieces of documents in windows next to and above and below each other, like so many papers spread out in overlapping piles on a desk with just their edges sticking out here and there to identify them. So little was visible of each document, so few identifying lines, that the user often simply forgot what was hidden underneath.
…Windows were a great idea until you compared them with the old-fashioned, uncomputerized desk, at which point it became obvious that they were simply too complicated to be dealt with efficiently. They made life more difficult, not easier, and they will continue to do so until a video display the size of a desktop can make visible a number of complete documents, each in its own window. That is something unlikely to occur, if for no other reason than cost, for at least a decade.
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