"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."
People do not desire better desktop operating systems. They want computers to disappear. It simply does not matter how good this awesome new, secure, desktop OS is because it's built for a world that doesn't exist anymore.
That's a great quote, and it is definitely true that often times users don't know what they want until they've been shown it.
However, we still use horses as transport. Sure, it's often just for pleasure, but the Police still use them, and rural people still use them, or people in mountains etc, because in those situations they are still better than anything Ford came up with.
So I don't think that quote is relevant here. People have accepted 'post-pcs' into their lives and they are good at lots of things. There are things that larger 'real' computers are better at though, and I don't see any evidence that will change.
The funny thing is that I parsed the quote verbatim on the first pass and it made me think the quote was referring to westerns -- John Ford being the famous movie actor.
Took my old brain a second or two to realize that I had previously heard that quote associated with Henry Ford.
John Ford is the famous western director, not so much an actor. Though I'm sure he did some stuff. Or is there another John Ford associated with westerns?
What's there to "invalidate"? You just made an assertion, not an argument.
You say that nobody wants to use desktops and people want computers to disappear. Unlike you, I don't believe that already, so do you have some evidence for it?
The blogpost I linked pointed out that this quote is often used not to justify a particular idea or position but instead to justify not paying attention to your audience. Paying attention doesn't mean groveling or completely giving up all of your own control.
