In my opinion, I believe the desktop computer experience suffered with three major changes since the days of Windows 95 and Macintosh System 7:<p>1. The rise of the Web, especially during the 2010s when web browsers became filled with enough features to host entire applications that were just as feature-packed as their desktop equivalents. In fact, there’s now an entire ecosystem of _desktop_ applications written entirely in Web technologies. The Web has no standard UI and no Human Interface Guidelines. Users have gotten accustomed to each application, whether in a Web browser or on a desktop (or smartphone) behaving its own way and having its own look and feel. This undermines the notion of a desktop computing environment enforcing standard UI/UX guidelines; if users spend most of their time on the Web or using Electron applications, then what’s the incentive for imposing standard UI/UX guidelines on desktop apps? Windows doesn’t even bother with consistency these days, and macOS is feeling less polished with each new release.<p>2. The rise of smartphones really took the winds out of the sails of desktop computing progress. This led to predictions in the early 2010s about “the death of the PC.” Such predictions were premature, but this didn’t stop Microsoft from releasing Windows 8, and this isn’t stopping Apple from gradually adding more iOS-style influences in macOS. Even some elements of the Linux desktop world flirted with the inclusion of smartphone/tablet elements in the desktop, such as Ubuntu’s Unity and modern GNOME.<p>3. I argue that the business models of Microsoft and Apple, the two leading desktop OS vendors, changed in the past decade. Previously these companies relied on regular, predictable upgrade cycles from their users for revenue. Their business model was selling tools to users. The problem, however, is that upgrade cycles have lengthened due to how good hardware in the past 10-15 years has become; for example, a 2012 Mac Pro is still an excellent machine in 2022 for most tasks. Because of these lengthier upgrade cycles, these companies are increasingly reliant on selling services for revenue. Reliance on services also incentivized these companies to constantly be advertising their services on their platforms.<p>I long for the days of no-nonsense operating systems like Windows 2000 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard that allowed users to do their work without constantly nagging them with advertisements and other notifications. This is partly why I use FreeBSD these days.