> Ever since the dawn of the Graphical User Interface operating system on mass-market computers in the mid-1980s, they have been designed primarily around what

> Ever since the dawn of the Graphical User Interface operating system on mass-market computers in the mid-1980s, they have been designed primarily around what was then called the “desktop metaphor,” and is more usefully described as a document-centric system I’m not a big fan of the Desktop as a file storage location. My experience on the Mac is that it just becomes cluttered with screenshots and old documents unless you babysit it. My solution has been to have screenshots saved in a ~/Screenshots directory. You can change the save location of screenshots with an easily Googlable command. I have a shortcut to this folder in my dock. I also have a separate folder ~/Temporary, which also has a shortcut in the dock. This is where I put any documents that I need to quickly reference only a handful of times. I have it set up to automatically send any documents that haven’t been opened in 30 days to the Trash, where you’ll have one final opportunity to recover the files before they vanish forever. This strategy has essentially obviated the Desktop as a file storage location, and just generally allows for more organized computing. No more ugly desktops with 50 icons scattered around. (I know this isn’t 100% related to the article, but it’s something potentially helpful that came to mind while reading it)