>the need for "new", when in most cases something vaguely similar to WinXP or OSX is fine for 90% of things

When you say that being vaguely similar to WinXP or OSX is fine for 90% of programs, is that in terms of looks, journey path, or something else?

I’d guess it is in terms of user experience, which is hard to achieve if you are optimizing for looks or journey path.

The article mentions this in the Business > User section, saying (removing euphemism and double negatives) the prevailing wisdom is that you will probably be fired unless you actively worsen the product, and provide metrics to explain how you did it.

I’d think that companies with customer bases that don’t actively hate them are less likely to have big layoff rounds, but I am not a UX expert.

AFAIC all of those have degraded.

My favourite website that was designed "mobile first" is the English Cities Fund site[1]. Why? Because the site is supposed to be the primary site for a Government-supported fund distributing millions of £££ to English towns and cities to help them regenerate (or "level up" in today's political Jargonese). The primary audience for such a site should - one assumes - be people who want to gain access to that funding: town planners, local authority CFO staff, etc[2]. People who are most likely to access the site while at work, viewing the site on their out-of-date workstations or non-touchscreen laptops.

Maybe some out-of-work UXRs would like to offer views on how to fix the site?

[1] - https://englishcitiesfund.co.uk/ - though when I just revisited, it appears to be broken for both mobile and desktop.

[2] - my (very personal) view is that the site was in fact designed to showcase work done, so it could be referenced in the Annual Reports of the Fund's partner companies, allowing them to check whatever corporate checkboxes they needed to check that year during their AGMs. Though people tell me that I am too cynical so I could be wrong.