Nick Bilton On The Future Of User Experience

Nick Bilton jumps in on the concept that future OS’s are likely to move away from the file/folder/desktop metaphor of Mac OS and Windows to something more like iPhone (as I did, here, here, and here):

Back in the dark ages of personal computing, if you wanted to look through the programs on your machine and, say, open a Microsoft Word document from the floppy drive, you would need to type a list of arcane commands that went something like this:

DIR *.EXE
MSWORD.EXE A:\REPORT.DOC

In an effort to win over less technical users, both Apple and Microsoft dumped that command-line interface for personal computers more than two decades ago, replacing it with visual icons for files, folders and applications. Over the years, they added animations and search technology and other features to make navigating a Mac or Windows PC even easier.

Yet all of the gloss and glitter doesn’t hide the fact that both operating systems are still pretty geeky and difficult for many computer users to navigate. I frequently get calls from family members asking why the font size on their Web browser suddenly changed or where they should look for the photos they have just downloaded from their digital camera.

I never get that kind of call about Apple’s iPhone.

[…]

To some extent, the industry is already moving in this direction of simplified operating systems. Google’s Android’s user interface, originally aimed at smartphones, is being used in the small, basic laptops known as netbooks. Apple is using the iPhone OS in its iPad tablet computer.

As Brian Chen of Wired predicted after Apple unveiled the iPad last month, “With the iPad and the horde of tablets that will follow it, we can expect computing to become much easier than what we’re accustomed to today.”

I think the technical challenges are less serious than the benefits, and the move to more mobile devices, and new approaches (like augmented reality and geolocation apps) will force rapid innovation.