It may be worth pointing out that the original desktop metaphor is about extending available space. It's about stacking, overlapping windows as a third way, rig

It may be worth pointing out that the original desktop metaphor is about extending available space. It's about stacking, overlapping windows as a third way, right through the demarcation line of the dilemma of switching versus tiling, to provide multiple views on a single screen. (The "tiling desktop" is actually some of an oximoron".) Further, the desktop as envisioned at PARC, is explicitly not skeuomorphic. As Alan Kay put it, "it's magic", meaning, it's a magic environment adhering to its own concepts and genuine metaphors. That these may sometimes pick from everyday experiences is rather a matter of learning and intuition, which allows the user to construct a model space of the computer and its internal, hidden concepts. In this sense, folders and documents are really more an alliteration than a metaphor, rather an invocation of related, familiar concepts hinting at the internal metaphors of the computer than being the metaphor in itself. To the workings of the desktop metaphor folders are accidental, not essential. Icons, on the other hand, are in themselves crucial metaphors of the WIMP desktop, regardless of whether they may be hinting at real-life objects or not. Similarities to real-life objects or workflows is not what's meant by the term "desktop metaphor". Spatial navigation, however, is yet another concept, historically imported from Dataland (MIT, 1979) [1]. – E.g., the Apple LISA was to have an abstract, tagging filing mechanism (the so-called "Twenty Questions Filer") and the spatial Finder was added last-minute [2]. Its limitations were noticed early on, even in development, especially regarding the integration of external file-spaces, but these were mostly ignored in times, when "external" meant floppies or maybe a 10MB HD. I think, there's much confusion about this… [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20200910041237/https://www.theverge.com/2012/5/24/3040959/dataland-mits-70s-media-room-concept-that-influenced-the-mac https://web.archive.org/web/20200910041237/https://www.theve... [2] https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Rosings_Rascals.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...