[RivieraKid]

All of the new desktop environments I know of (Win 8, Gnome 3, Unity) are steps backwards. The classical desktop concept (taskbar + floating windows) has tens of years of evolution behind it. If there was a better concept, it would have been invented before.

[Maascamp]

I'm sorry, but that's just a terrible way of thinking about things. If we assume things that have been around for a while have reached their apex by virtue of them having been around for a while we'd never make any progress.

[eksith]

Let's forget computers for a while and think about good ol' pen and paper. Ask yourself these questions:

  Do you use a desk?
  Do you use paper?
  Do you use folders?
  How big is your desk? 
  How do you keep the papers on your desk?
  Do you hold up one sheet to read and one sheet exclusively?
  Do you keep a bunch of sheets side-by-side and compare them to each other?
  Do you like to open folders repeatedly or open a few papers from each folder?

No amount of design innovation can suppress the quirks and foibles of human nature. Quite often, aesthetic engineering survives an encounter with a user just as well as a battle plan does while encountering the enemy.

[RivieraKid]

But it's usually true. Inventions are usually enabled by changes of the surrounding environment.