Desktop Metaphor - History

History

The desktop metaphor was first introduced by Alan Kay at Xerox PARC in 1970 and elaborated in a series of innovative software applications developed by PARC scientists throughout the ensuing decade. The first commercial computer that adopted this kind of interface was the Xerox Star.

One of the very first desktop-like interfaces on the market was a program called Magic Desk I built on a cartridge for the Commodore 64 home computer in 1983. A very primitive GUI presented a low resolution sketch of a desktop, complete with telephone, drawers, calculator, etc. The user made his choices by moving a sprite depicting a hand pointing by using the same joystick the user may have used for video gaming. Onscreen options were chosen by pushing the fire button on the joystick. The Magic Desk program featured a typewriter graphically emulated complete with audio effects. Other applications included a calculator, rolodex organiser, and a terminal emulator. Files could be archived into the drawers of the desktop. A trashcan was also present.

The first computer to popularise the desktop metaphor, using it as a standard feature over the earlier command line interface was the Apple Macintosh in 1984. The desktop metaphor is ubiquitous in modern-day personal computing; it is found in most desktop environments of modern operating systems: Windows as well as Mac OS X, Linux, and other Unix-like systems.

BeOS observed the desktop metaphor more strictly than many systems. For example, external hard drives appeared on the ‘desktop’, while internal ones were accessed clicking on an icon representing the computer itself. By comparison, the Mac OS places all drives on the desktop itself by default, while in Windows the user can access the drives through an icon labelled "Computer".

Amiga terminology for its desktop metaphor was taken directly from workshop jargon. The desktop was called Workbench, programs were called tools, small applications (applets) were utilities, directories were drawers, etc. Icons of objects were animated and the directories are shown as drawers which were represented either open or closed. As in the Mac OS desktop, an icon for a floppy disk or CD-ROM would appear on the desktop when the disk was inserted into the drive, as it was a virtual counterpart of a physical floppy disk or CD-ROM on the surface of a workbench.