[Mature Quality Debate, No shitposting] - Topic: Desktop User Experience

Thought this kind of thread would be a quality, stimulation and thought-provoking alternative that constant low-quality shitposting lack of seriousness autism that doesn't befit true CompSci discipline.
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Now the question for this debate is,

"Is the Desktop market for computers really going down in quality as compared to how it was in the 80s and 90s? Why or why not??"

(and I want you to think about it closely and tell me some quality reason why you think so)

My Opinion: Yes. Because enterprise demands and have caused the desktop market to become the new adware/garbage can for materialist advertisement and enterprise profit and productivity. Compare the Desktop-Centric OS's of the 90s and the ones we see now. Now we have ads all over the userland (Microsoft "App suggestions", Google ads, Canonical/Ubuntu userspace ads).
Back in the 90s, the goal was ONLY to the please the sole contributor to PC market (Home users), which had the demands of (useable interface, performance, software compatibility). However, since PC tech developed, desktop environments it became very useful to companies and thus the focus of Home user experience decline, and encourage materialism. Home user hobby software such as creative arts, home finance management, games, hobbyist movie making, hobbyist image editing, etc... is low quality today (the only freeware is GIMP, which is the half-assed version of the enterprise ADOBE Photoshop), however enterprise software is much more developed (Visual Studio, Maya, 3DS Max) they don't have hobbyist alternative: Simplistic interfaces and productivity for the home user.

Another example: Decent Laptops with quality hobbyist/homeusr hardware are insanely expensive. Cheap ass ipads/tablets and phones are the only alternative. However, enterprise quality servers etc.. have good cheap options.

my dude, have you ever been outside?

smartphone is the new laptop
laptop is the new desktop
desktop is the new virgin mark

Oh and another example: build quality of home user laptops and desktops are bad, and need replacement every couple years. The Desktop market is failing

>(Visual Studio
What is the community edition? What is clang?

>desktop is the new virgin mark
>new

we're just back to 1997

What kinda nerd still uses a desktop?
Just buy a iphone you idiots

>Desktop market is failing
I think you meant the prebuilt market is failing

I think there's some problem in the breakdown of categorisation and accepted capabilities of each category.

Or to put it another way, a "personal computer", a "desktop computer", and a "workstation" are now largely intended to be the same thing.

Of course to regular users the wanted functions of a personal computer are now taken by their smartphones and tablets, but rather than a break in the market we've essentially ended up with (over the last 15+ years because laptops started the process) desktops stepping up to the workstation level, meaning hardware even that's intended for minimal use in terms of system tasks has the construction of a workstation: a large heavy box with a lot of cooling.

I think this has resulted in an identity crisis from which developers of both hardware and software are yet to recover mentally.

You just made me think of something I never did until now, and that is how a computer is now considered ‘out of date’ by outside forces rather than by the user’s change in desires for that computer. A computer purchased in 1990 (for example) will still work for those tasks in 2000 (if it still works), while a computer bought in 2000 was seen as hopelessly ‘out of date’ by 2010 because by then a computer was expected to do so much more and you needed to do that or be left behind.

A computer bought for “just browsing the internet” in 2010 would really struggle with the internet of today.

We have """koders""" (read: hopelessly incompetent Web devs) to thank for. The woman in charge of our school's website has no idea how to write a dead simple HTML document, let alone design and develop a "modern" website that's supposed to have useful information both for potential and current students. She just uses WordPress and loads it up with PajeetScript "plugins" up the wazoo (example: She uses a plugin for FAQ, something that just screams simple and static page). It's really quite something.

The utter bloat of web-dev in general; The fact that loading 1 web-page can take more than 100mb of ram shows that people don't care about code optimization at all. Some domains are like an entire OS in themselves. It's all about just making shit look EDGYKEWL to promote their products and services to the normies

A lot of people will say something like "RAM is there to be used" which on the surface is true, however, it is also the same excuse given by these Ranjeets and Nu-Coders for why their simple programs require hundreds of MB of memory and a multi-core CPU running hot.

It's not just the web, but in general things have bloated that never should have.

The size of operating systems now (both in terms of footprint and install) is disgusting.

...

Another problem is that its now spread to Linux.

If you have a Pi doing nothing (don't we all?) install RISC OS Open on it, and you'll be shocked at how quick and light it is. It's the way things should be.

It's the normies too desu. The normies back then were more sensible than they were now. Demand meets its produce. Nowadays people just want to tap on phones with their sleeky gay gui and do stupid shit on them instead of having a reliable home-end workstation for their needs

Which would be fine, but we're yet to have the polished and reliable workstation because they're trying to capture that market.

Both input devices of a computer (even a laptop) are absolute precision (The 'A' key puts 'A' on the screen, a click at the head of the pointer activates that exact pixel), so why do they keep putting fat headers and lumpy UI themes in place?

What always gets to me most is the "no one knows how this works" recurrence. Didn't anyone write down a design bible? No infrastructure blueprints?

I just hate how different people act about digital technology compared to any other.

Like they'll be all into how fuel or energy efficient their car or appliances are, but will then tolerate the most sluggish and awful shit on a computer/phone because it looks good.

>I think this has resulted in an identity crisis from which developers of both hardware and software are yet to recover mentally.

The iPhone was a massive shakeup. I don’t think people at the time really thought how much of a game changer that was.

>laptop is the new desktop
Laptops are just crippled desktops. We need a proper hardware and software combo that actually makes them worth having. At the moment they're neither as capable as a desktop nor as mobile as a smartphone.