Talk:Post-WIMP

iPhone Relevance?
How is iPhoneOS Post-WIMP? It has Windows, Icons, Menus and a Pointer. I would say iPhoneOS is more WIMP than the original iPod. Especially compared to other smart phones, why is the iPhone more relevant than any of those? How about GPS devices, car stereos, dvd menus, etc.? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hullo exclamation mark (talk • contribs) 11:02, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It has no onscreen pointer/cursor in most interactions, no windows (except possibly for the “windowing” feature introduced to iPads a couple years ago, which is really more like panes or tiles than windows, per sē,) and it lacks omnipresent dropdown menus of the global (Mac-style) or per-window (most other DEs) variety that characterize WIMP. As 24.4.155.39 said below, the new “gesture”-centric interactions that characterize iOS and its imitators make it a good candidate for something post-WIMP. 2600:1700:DA90:2AB0:2C3E:77E1:B73E:6C54 (talk) 20:35, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Does “post WIMP” even exist?
Using ATMs as an example of “post WIMP” is rather revisionist considering the ATM was patented in 1960. These UIs are certainly non-WIMP, but in what way are they “post-WIMP”? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nemo20000 (talk • contribs) 18:36, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I noticed the same thing, and have added a citation needed to that section. According to my cursory research (other wikipedia articles and online secondary sources) the essential ATM user experience was cemented at the latest by the IBM 2984, about ten years before Xerox was producing the Star. So ATM interfaces are decidedly pre-WIMP. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.65.238.251 (talk) 02:20, 17 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, "Post" is the problematic part of the name. The idea of a simpler GUI using a low resolution screen as in a PDA is not new.  It has merely received new attention with the rise of GUI televisions and especially of smartphones and tablet computers having small portable screens.  Would "sub" be a better prefix, or is there already a conventional, non proprietary term?  Jim.henderson (talk) 00:45, 19 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I've just been reading some of the primary sources, and I think that post-WIMP is the accepted term, just that these examples, and really the article as a whole, don't really explain the concept the way the sources do. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.67.159.226 (talk) 01:19, 4 June 2011 (UTC)


 * The Post would designate that it evolved from WIMP, which ATMs and iPods didn't really do that, they're just seperate things.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.28.199.40 (talk) 15:00, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

I must agree. Simple GUI does not equate to post(meaning AFTER)-wimp. Personally, I would limit the label Post-Wimp to the swipe and pinch elements of modern palm-top computers (you know, smart phones and tablets). Even new ATMs use pre-wimp GUIs, or possibly (with touch-screens) I (icon) interfaces (WIMP without the windows, pull-down menus, or pointers). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.4.155.39 (talk) 10:03, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

iPod as Post-WIMP?
The original iPod UX was, in fact, menu driven in its entirety. This point seems worth consideration since the article claims that the iPod is an example of Post-WIMP interfaces. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.112.210.19 (talk) 15:07, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Agreed, the only notable distinction of the iPod was its wheel, which functioned identically to the interface on many automobile/hifi stereo systems. 2600:1700:DA90:2AB0:2C3E:77E1:B73E:6C54 (talk) 20:35, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Creative apps as weak spots for WIMP
I haven't yet read the ACM papers cited by the article to see if that is something original to the Wikipedia article, but the assertion that something like SolidWorks or SPSS are “applications for which WIMP is not well suited” seems, even if not theoretically in retrospect from the 1990s, certainly from a modern perspective, to be baldly absurd.

Granted, WIMP was originally designed around and remains most closely suited to DTP tasks (drawing, word processing, page layout, database and file management), but even for tasks that frequently require HIDs beyond a mouse and keyboard such as video, audio, music, 3D, or animation, there are essentially no alternatives to WIMP for their primary UI. Further, such applications remain by far the least assailable stronghold of WIMP GUIs and their mouse/keyboard/monitor desktop workstation HIDs, even as non-WIMP UIs and their accompanying touchscreen HIDs struggle to advance beyond passive content consumption to displace WIMP from even the simplest creative apps.

The only credible challenger to WIMP in any of these applications (aside from some legacy holdouts from keyboard-centric chording TUIs like EMACS/VI in software development) are preliminary efforts at new VR/AR UIs, still hamstrung by the rudimentary state of their necessary HMD/6DoF HIDs. 2600:1700:DA90:2AB0:2C3E:77E1:B73E:6C54 (talk) 20:35, 16 November 2021 (UTC)