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Desktop Quotes

A desktop can be a literal object, a chaotic surface for ideas, or the icon-filled screen where modern work happens. These desktop quotes move across all three senses, from a dramatic prop swept clean in a thriller to the hierarchical files that structure how computers organize information. One line even captures the honest disorder of a real creative desktop, cluttered with half-formed ideas waiting to be sorted, which is a feeling most desk workers will recognize immediately.

From film sets to software design, the desktop shows up as both a physical surface and a digital metaphor. These quotes capture how technology has reshaped a word that once meant nothing more than the top of a desk.

I usually just go on Google and spend my hours just Googling Jennifer Beals. I think it's possible that I have a slightly unordinary obsession with her. YouTube videos. Interviews with her. Pictures I put on my desktop and my...

Quotes by Adhir Kalyan

'Polisse' is the sort of cop thriller where people do things like angrily bang on a desktop or sweep everything off it. If it happens once, it must happen six times. But every time it did, I wanted to stand...

Quotes by Wesley Morris

For those still outside the cult of Slack, it's a service - available as a desktop or mobile app, or a website - which is essentially a series of public chat rooms (called channels) on topics relevant to a company...

Quotes by Walt Mossberg

Computers are hierarchical. We have a desktop and hierarchical files which have to mean everything.

Quotes by Ted Nelson

Able Quotes

When something effective takes hold, it can change the world. Whether through a mobile device or a desktop computer, connectivity and creativity make it all possible.

Quotes by Tae Yoo

Microsoft has a monopoly over the desktop operating systems.

Quotes by Stewart Alsop

Some of the biggest changes that have happened are behind the scenes, in the way we produce the magazine. E.g., much of our production has been brought in-house via desktop publishing.

Quotes by Stanley Schmidt

I remember having computers at my parents' house growing up. We had different desktop PCs, but my first laptop was an IBM ThinkPad laptop. It was big, bulky, slow and terrible.

Quotes by Scott Michael Foster

The entire Internet, as well as the types of devices represented by the desktop computer, the laptop computer, the iPhone, the iPod, and the iPad, are a continuing inescapable embarrassment to science fiction, and an object lesson in the fallibility...

Quotes by Paul Di Filippo

Always Quotes

We cannot choose one desktop over the other - Gnome or KDE - because there's users for both code bases.

Quotes by Miguel de Icaza

In the early 1990s, Americans used their home phone lines to connect their desktop computers to the Internet via ISPs like AOL, Earthlink, or Netzero. Back then, the ISPs didn't have cost-effective technology to select particular sites for blocking or...

Quotes by Marvin Ammori

In the modern desktop environment, with multitasking and alerts and constant activity, there are always more distractions. When you're at a computer, your hands are always on the controls.

Quotes by Marco Arment

Our goal is very simply to become the desktop for e-businesses.

Quotes by Larry Ellison

My desktop is really chaotic, and I'm always trying to work out where I am going to put all these ideas.

Quotes by Julia Davis

Computers Quotes

I am always making sketches of how information should look or mapping out a marketing campaign. When I present my notes, people start responding to them. Desktop publishing makes everything look slick. When you present sketches, it helps start the...

Quotes by John Katzman

With consumers buying two smartphones for every desktop computer they purchase, the demands, challenges and opportunities of the mobile space are reshaping our assumptions about design and user behaviour.

Quotes by Jeffrey Zeldman

People like rich applications on their desktop, and there is no reason why you can't have both a rich desktop and a light, cloud-based application framework. Why is it always either/or for people?

Quotes by Jason Calacanis

You see people doing Java-based internal applications all over the place, regular desktop applications that are sort of front-ends to the things in the back, or standalone things.

Quotes by James Gosling

GIS started on mainframe computers; we could get one map every five to 10 hours, and if we made a mistake, it could take longer. In the early '90s, when people started buying PCs, we migrated to desktop software.

Quotes by Jack Dangermond

I Am Quotes

Web GIS allows us to take our systems of record - our traditional server and desktop technologies - and integrate them, bringing them together into a system of systems.

Quotes by Jack Dangermond

Frequently Asked Questions

Do these desktop quotes focus on computers or physical desks?
Both. Some quotes describe a literal desktop being banged on or swept clean in a film scene, while others use desktop in the computing sense, referring to hierarchical files and apps.
Is there a quote about desktop versus mobile apps?
Yes, one quote describes a service reachable through a computer program, a phone app, or simply a browser, reflecting how the word desktop has expanded to cover multiple platforms.
What do the quotes say about how computers organize information?
One quote notes that computers are hierarchical, with a desktop and hierarchical files that have to account for everything, describing a structured way of thinking about digital organization.
Is a messy desktop treated positively or negatively here?
Positively in one case, where a chaotic desktop is described as a place for working out where to put many ideas, framing clutter as part of an active creative process rather than a failure.
Are there related quotes about technology habits?
Yes, browse our Computers collection for more on how digital tools shape everyday work and creativity.

For more on how technology changes daily habits, see our Computers and Always collections alongside this one.