general-purpose pc becomes obsolete 12Aug04

Sample, Screenshot: www.jnd.org

According to a articel of the computerworld Don Norman said last week
that the general-purpose pc should become obsolete. Because the GUI of a file-based Operating System with all the data a normal user has to handle today becomes too complex.

Norman: “You didn’t have to remember anything, because you could see everything. Now making everything visible doesn’t work. The space gets too crowded.”

The document-folder hierarchy is not the best model for working with a huge amount of files he said. "Wanting to send an email with an attached document and having to look in different folders and maybe start up a word-processing program is an obstruction to the natural way of working. It clearly makes sense to store everything once. Conventional file systems tend to produce duplicate files stored in different places."

Norman was Apple’s design guru for many years. He is now advising Microsoft on the GUI for Longhorn.

Related Links:
Computerworld
Don Norman's jnd.org