The so-called desktop first appeared on a home computer in 1981, with the release of the Xerox 8010 Star Information System. That device pioneered the graphical-user interface, or G.U.I., a convenient series of visual metaphors that allows us to interact more easily with our machines. The most basic computing interface is the command-line prompt, the empty box in which users write instructions in code directly to the machine; the Xerox Star replaced that forbidding vacuum with a friendly illustration of a tabletop surface, textured in patterned pixels, scattered with icons for folders, spreadsheets, and filing trays. A 1982 paper on the device described the then novel system: “Users are encouraged to think of the objects on the Desktop in physical terms. You can move the icons around to arrange your Desktop as you wish. (Messy Desktops are certainly possible, just as in real life.)” That mess derives from the files that we scatter on our desktops, agglomerations of data in formats that read as increasingly arcane and anachronistic: PDFs, JPGs, ZIPs, M4As. Similar to a physical desk drawer, the desktop is now something that we tend to stuff full and then forget about.
Over the past decade of computing, the desktop has receded. Digital-file systems have gone the way of the IRL inbox tray. Instead, we use the search bar to call up any file that we might want to find or tap apps that provide self-contained, streamlined experiences for consuming or producing content. Our phone home screens are even less customizable and less idiosyncratic than our computer desktops; we rarely think of individual files existing on our phones. Apple recently launched an iPhone operating-system interface redesign called Liquid Glass that turns its icons translucent, further homogenizing their appearance. Even such icons may soon be a thing of the past. The promise of artificial intelligence is that the desktop will disappear entirely and users will only interact with a chatbot or a voice that will carry out their bidding through plain language alone, morphing the entire computer into an anthropomorphized character. No mess there, just A.I. efficiency.
Amid the accelerating automation of our computers—and the proliferation of assistants and companions and agents designed to execute tasks for us—I’ve been thinking more about the desktop that’s hidden in the background of the laptop I use every day. Mine is strewn with screenshots and Word documents and e-books. What I’ve accrued the most of by far, though, are TextEdit files, from the bare-bones Mac app that just lets you type stuff into a blank window. Apple computers have come with text-editing software since the original Mac was released, in 1984; the current iteration of the program launched in the mid-nineties and has survived relatively unchanged. Over the past few years, I’ve found myself relying on TextEdit more as every other app has grown more complicated, adding cloud uploads, collaborative editing, and now generative A.I. TextEdit is not connected to the internet, like Google Docs. It is not part of a larger suite of workplace software, like Microsoft Word. You can write in TextEdit, and you can format your writing with a bare minimum of fonts and styling. Those files are stored as RTFs (short for rich-text format), one step up from the most basic TXT file. TextEdit now functions as my to-do-list app, my e-mail drafting window, my personal calendar, and my stash of notes to self, which act like digital Post-its.
I trust in TextEdit. It doesn’t redesign its interface without warning, the way Spotify does; it doesn’t hawk new features, and it doesn’t demand I update the app every other week, as Google Chrome does. I’ve tried out other software for keeping track of my random thoughts and ideas in progress—the personal note-storage app Evernote; the task-management board Trello; the collaborative digital workspace Notion, which can store and share company information. Each encourages you to adapt to a certain philosophy of organization, with its own formats and filing systems. But nothing has served me better than the brute simplicity of TextEdit, which doesn’t try to help you at all with the process of thinking. Using the app is the closest you can get to writing longhand on a screen. I could make lists on actual paper, of course, but I’ve also found that my brain has been so irredeemably warped by keyboards that I can only really get my thoughts down by typing. (Apparently my internal monologue takes place in Arial typeface, fourteen-point font.)
TextEdit is software that does what it says on the box. Its app icon features a sheet of lined paper. The writing window has an anachronistic measuring rule in the header with customizable margins, though I’ve never printed a TextEdit file. That kind of skeuomorphism—the design of a digital interface to resemble a physical one, by, for example, adding a faux-metal texture to a calculator app—has been out of fashion for more than a decade, ever since Apple moved away from it in the early twenty-tens. But the literalist sensibility is coming back into vogue as A.I. destabilizes our technological interactions once more and causes us to search for new metaphors to govern our digital lives. Earlier this year, Airbnb launched a heavily skeuomorphic redesign, swapping its buttons for tiny animated renderings of real-life objects: a slant-roofed home, for rentals; a hot-air balloon, for “experiences”; and a concierge bell, for services. The message of the interface is, Trust our software; it will deliver exactly what it promises. In practice, though, Airbnb’s offerings remain quite opaque, and driven by algorithmic recommendations that try to anticipate the user’s desires.
We users have learned that cloud-based apps and digital platforms are more likely to surveil us, mine our data, and manipulate our attention than to provide us the precise content and services we seek. Companies are trying to combat that accumulated sense of distrust in various other ways. This month, the A.I. company Anthropic tried to give itself a friendlier, more physical face by hosting a pop-up at a West Village storefront which it reportedly dubbed a “zero slop zone.” Attendees received free baseball caps embroidered with the word “thinking”—never mind that the product the company puts forward is supposed to do the thinking for you. Pinterest, the source of many complaints about A.I. images, has allowed users to minimize A.I. content in search results, and iPhones include a setting that disables Apple Intelligence features. The best way to reclaim our digital experiences, though, might be to stick with the likes of TextEdit, software that is unable to do anything except follow our commands. ♦
