When Microsoft introduced the taskbar with Windows 95, this was as far as I’m concerned the greatest breakthrough in desktop GUI productivity. Why? Because before that, desktop UIs simply weren’t designed for multitasking very well. Yes, they could multitask, but the way in which it was done was awful. In just about every GUI prior to Win95, all running apps were shoved into the background where you couldn’t see them. Apps were open, but how many? Most of the time you simply didn’t know unless you launched a separate app just to see a list of the stuff currently running. Win95 cured that ill in one fell swoop by showing a nice little bar that was clickable (gasp!) showing all the stuff you currently had open.

The Win95 taskbar was so good that Linux desktop GUI developers copied it outright even in the earliest Linux GUIs of the mid-1990s. Why? Because the way Microsoft (read: not the Mac) did it made sense.

Showing the stuff you currently have open in a bar at the bottom of the screen is something people took to very quickly because it gives you more control over your computing environment. No need to hunt and peck around to find out what’s running, because if it’s active, it’s in the bar either as a "full-length" clickable option for fast switching, or a smaller mini-icon next to the clock for the same thing. Either way, you know what’s there.

What all three major desktop GUIs (Windows, Mac OS X, Ubuntu/Unity) are doing now or in the very-near future are shoving a mobile-style environment on the desktop. Soon-to-be Windows 8 with "Metro", OS X Lion with iOS5-like crap and Ubuntu with the much-maligned Unity GUI. Every one of these is something which is supposed to give mobile-like interface on your desktop.

A mobile GUI on a desktop is simply a bad idea because it goes right back to what desktop GUIs used to be like before Windows 95 where most if not all background tasks are shoved in the background and out of your view. This is bad.

In a mobile environment, yes you have limited screen space so of course it makes sense to shove things in the background to give you more ‘real estate’, so to speak. I get that. But to do that on a desktop makes no sense at all. Anyone who uses a PC has a minimum 17-inch screen so there’s plenty of room for a taskbar. To replace the bar with big, cute, fluffy icons and no bar is just plain dumb and, dare I say, counterproductive.

Nobody said, "Gee.. I sure miss that old Program Manager" when Windows 95 was released. Nobody said, "Gee.. I miss MacOS 9′s clunky window management over OS X’s dock" when OS X was released. Nobody said, "Unity’s big, colorful, fluffy icons are so much better than the panels I used to have!" Nobody said any of those things.

Whether it’s a taskbar, dock or panel, people like their small horizontal bar areas at the bottom or top that tell you what’s open and more importantly what isn’t.

Mobile environments do not belong on the PC desktop. Period.

Like what you read?

If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below: