> What if we remove windows completely? Think about it - when you open a program, you don't actually need a separate window. What you need is functionality! So

> What if we remove windows completely? Think about it - when you open a program, you don't actually need a separate window. What you need is functionality! So what if we remove windows and keep only the functionality. For example, you open a .doc file, but there is no separate window. You stay in the same "Desktop", but now you have an open file and functions to work with this file. And if you need some other functions, you open another program - and other functions appear on the desktop. So now you have two different programs working as one! And you don't need to arrange different programs and files on the screen. Because now you can have different programs and files working simultaneously as one. This idea of a "universal container" as strong similarities to Apple/IBMs "project pink" and OpenDoc [1] in the 90s that went on to become Taligent [2] that went on to become... not very much. There was also Microsoft's roughly concurrent efforts with OLE [3] and Windows NT Cairo - OLE was a stab at what might be described as componentising application functionality at the UI level, and Cairo had (iirc) the ambitious goal of replacing (augmenting?) the windows file system with a semantic data store with OLE/ActiveX as the UI layer. OLE did kind of work, and actually made it into products like Word and Excel - though whether that was a good thing is debatable. The rest of it basically got canned, probably because it was too difficult to implement and/or sell. But I'm sure the influence lives on to some extent. I'm not aware of any serious attempts to go down this route again. I still have some OpenDoc SDK beta CDs somewhere. It might be interesting to get them out and have a look. Personally I think that "application" as a discrete concept provides a useful conceptual boundary [4] - although I will admit that this may just be that my brain is by now hard-wired for it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDoc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDoc [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Linking_and_Embedding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Linking_and_Embedding [4] Both for people using the application and for the grubby activity of selling it to them. Got to have a "thing" to sell.