Is today's shape of apps was inevitable?

We abandoned some model of working with computers. Most of people moved from computers to mobiles. Most of the time they are using some standard types of apps:

simplified messaging,

media consuming (video, music - VOD with simple players and images - mainly social media),

so called social media (likes, and simplified comments).

Most of the utilities and programs were moved into web or mobile apps. Most of users don't use any advanced utilities. I think that people stop needing even a office suit for personal use. Marginalization of apps is visible at top charts (paid and free) of mobile stores. There are no notable titles there. Most of the charts are dominated by games, and social media and shopping apps.

But some decades ago we had a different model of working with computers. The utilities and programs were essentials of computers. We had:

advanced messaging (e-mail, Usenet etc. with many and long text forms, even for internet forums),

cataloging software (media, books etc. collections, real persons addresses and contacts),

networking software (FTP, P2P etc.),

advanced players (all kind of media),

office suite or graphical editors, which was connected with printing on own printer,

computer used for calculations (spreadsheets or high-level computer languages like BASIC).

There were also games (it's interesting that there were less than 5000 games for Commodore 64, and now it's more than 50000 games for recent gaming platforms) but there was some balance between entertainment and personal use of computers.

Today simplifying of apps is connected also with simplifying of the average usage of OS. I wonder if there is still need, for example, of having some compressing software (ZIP and so on). I think that average person has lower number of files and data on computers (excluding videos and images). Most of the sharing services working as sharing of links for remote content. OS could be limited to showing apps shortcuts, and simplified list of files. Be like Chrome OS.

It's interesting if today's model of working with computers is caused by some natural evolution? Maybe all early users became professionals, and still are using that advanced apps for work or specialistic hobby. And the rest of people don't need such solutions. Or it's some kind neglect and ignorance, maybe lack of proper education?

BTW Good point in discussion about education on [Why I'm starting to prefer console programs].

> As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm spending a lot of time on the small internet: especially pubnixes like rawtext.club. This means I've been having to do a lot of things _only_ through the command line, even things that I hadn't thought of before like reading e-books, chatting, or maintaining & browsing collections of links.

> This, combined with the fact that I want to stop handing kids locked down chromebooks as devices, has gotten me thinking a lot about the nature of most commandline tools as smaller, simpler, and more efficient & whether that can buy us something about giving kids the ability to work on lower-power but affordable computers _that still let them control the machines_.

Maybe the next generation of users will change their habits backward to the advanced utilities in the same, self-driven way.

[Why I'm starting to prefer console programs]

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@ Fri 09 Jul 2021 10:59:18 PM CEST

tags: #cli, #software