- File storage and manipulation
- File search
- Networking
- Application installation, management and (local) discovery
- Application running and managing multiple running applications at once
- Regular system security and bugfix updates
I think most the complains at this point are on very small changes to those things, such as their appearance or where to find them. Fro example, the whole windows 8 start menu problem. That's purely a matter of different display and slightly different functionality of application discovery.
Computers are problematic in large part because of the tremendous range of environments and uses:
1. Domain experts with decades of experience and highly-tuned, fixed-location, immersed interfaces. Old-school workstations. Heavy on CLI or usually really idiosyncratic GUIs.
2. More casual office users. This is your general file/task approach. I still think that could be improved, though the question is how. Having to consciously consider applications is IMO an error.
3. Mobile. Suboptimal conditions for viewing, entering, reading, etc. Some of the audio input (Amazon Echo, Google Now, Apple Siri) systems may address parts of this.
4. Appliances / controls: anything from digital clocks to DVD/BluRay players to microwaves and kitchen stoves and thermostats and washing machines. LED / LCD displays, anything from 2+ buttons to numeric keypads to dials to full keyboards. Incredible inconsistency across and even _within_ applications.
Of three sets of digital kitchen timers:
One blinks the minutes:seconds colon to indicate it is counting down, the other to indicate it isn't.
A microwave control allows use of either the timer or the microwave, but not both simultaneously.
Several chime repeatedly, others only once (and woe be you if you happen to miss the timer).
None have a count-up feature telling you _when the timer went off_.
I prefer a wind-up dial timer. Simple interface, and it's obvious when and how it's working. The bell is loud enough to hear rooms away.
I'm reading Robert J. Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth, which looks at trends and patterns over the period since the Civil War (1870), most especially what he terms "the special century" (1870-1970), and also examined as three periods, 1870 - 1920, 1920 - 1970, and 1970 - present (almost even 50 year intervals).
I've just read his chapter on cars, and what equipment wasn't on the original Ford Model T: speedometer, fuel guage, headlights, a top, bumpers, electric starter (let alone automatic choke, spark adjustment, or transmission), etc. They weren't really fully settled until about 1940.
Computers still seem to be working these things out.