What purpose does the Desktop serve?

[bill]

An odd, nigh-well stupid question, I agree. Still, what purpose does it serve?

A place to see your drives & disks? Sidebar (in Finder) or the Volumes shelf (in Path Finder) show me all mounted drives & disks and grant me access with a single click.

Okay, if you have your drive icons visible on the desktop, you can tell how much free space you've got, granted.

A place to put frequently used files/folders? Wouldn't most of those be Documents, Movies, Music or Pictures? What's left? Programs? Wouldn't those go in /Applications or ~/Applications? Or, if it's your program(s), I dunno, Project or Development, or whatever? Dumping everything on/in the Desktop is messy. (Of course, dumping everything on your real desktop is me.)

Access to the Trash? It's in the Dock, and in the Path Finder menu. Anyway, IIRC, there's no native desktop trash access.

Showing off the pretty wallpaper/desktop image? I run everything I can full-screen, so I can't even see the desktop. Pretty piccies? That's why I've got posters on my walls.

I've used Tinkertool to turn the Finder desktop off, and haven't bothered to turn Path Finder's on. As far as I'm concerned, the Desktop is just another folder, albeit a folder with potentially peculiar behavior.

So, I guess, the question is: what purpose does, or could, the Desktop serve for me? Tell me what I'm missing, what you use the desktop for that'd be different and useful.

Here's what I do use the desktop for: every program I have that downloads, downloads to ~/Desktop/target. Some programs, when installed, install a readme to the Desktop, so I've got a couple of those in there, probably. Since I've got target in the Path Finder shelf, I haven't had to open Desktop for a while.

Why download to ~/Desktop/target specifically? I used to use ~/Internet/target, but decided I didn't want to clutter up my home folder with extra files/folders/garbage, and I had a perfectly good Desktop folder I wasn't using.

[grotsasha]

:) :) :) :)

For me, the desktop serves to make a mess on my computer, that I should clean all the time.... :D

[bill]

But that's what I've got a real desk for!

[grotsasha]

Well, a desk is always a desk :wink: :wink:

[flip]

FWIW, I use the desktop as a temporary folder. I use it to save temporary documents that I know I'll trash soon, or documents that I haven't decided yet where I'll store them.

I think it's a relatively good analogy with a real desktop, where documents would usually stay only temporarily.

All my downloads go to a specific folder where they are stored in subfolders named by date.

[bill]

FWIW, I use the desktop as a temporary folder. I use it to save temporary documents that I know I'll trash soon, or documents that I haven't decided yet where I'll store them.
That's what I use ~/Documents/temp and ~/Documents/sort for, personally.
I think it's a relatively good analogy with a real desktop, where documents would usually stay only temporarily.
It ain't documents I have a problem with, on my real desktop. Stacks & stacks of CDs & DVDs (which I'm going to organize Real Soon NowTM, soldering iron, solder & a hard drive w/broken molex, notebooks (OK, I guess they could be counted as documents), small tools, computer parts & wiring, a small bookshelf and, last but not least, my Cthulhu plushie. Oh, and a mousetrap.
All my downloads go to a specific folder where they are stored in subfolders named by date.
More organized than I am. I dump everything into target (my d/l folder), then let it simmer until I either install it (at which point I put it into target/installed, if there's anything to put in there) or decide it's been sitting long enough and gets moved to /BigBox/archives/downloads until such time as I've got enough there to burn off to DVD.

[macsterdam]

To make the desktop look like it's less of a mess and still have quick access to files, I use the Finder's desktop in combination with DeskShade (http://www.macrabbit.com/deskshade/) and Exposé.

A short movieclip of how that works here (http://m-net.nl/deskshade.html)

[Ilgaz]

Desktop is really a "virtual desktop", e.g. the one on table.

[floatingtrem]

I use my desktop as many things:

-as quick access to my HD's, the path finder icon just prings up any window i already have open, and when i just want to get to my HDs its a little quicker.

-as a temporary dumping ground and download folder, while yes i could have a donwload folder, and some place to just throw all my junk, but its out of sight and out of mind. I like to keep my files at least somewhat organized, and if i just throw everything in a folder somewhere i wont keep it clean, with my desktop its all right there in my face and it forces me to clean stuff up.

-as an easy access scratch folder. If i'm working on a project of some sort thats got me dealilng with a bunch of files, i'll just throw them on my desktop so they're just an F11 away, no matter what i'm up to.

-as a place to stick pretty pictures. as a multi tasking freak i can not stand maximizing windows, yeah its great when i'm working in FCP, but i even feel like photoshop takes up too much room. and so i see alot of desktop through all the holes and I like to keep it purdy.

[lunac]

I have found the perfect use for the desktop, I use Geektool to run files and shell scripts on the desktop. that allowed me to put my calendar and todo list there. So the first thing I see when I turn on my mac is my what's happening for the day. And as the day continues my todo's and schedule are only an F11 away.

Check out my post about it on Go Get Organized (http://darasplace.com/115/finally-a-desktop-that-is-organized-and-functional/).

Now if only I could figure out how to run shell scripts in Pathfinder's desktop, then I could get rid of my finder all together.