Some ideas:
- Sometimes we come up with solutions for problems that people don't have.
- Not well-marketed enough.
- Too complicated for people to grok. The abstractions get in the way of people trying to understand a feature. A new paradigm for communication would be hard to understand for most people and provide little benefit.
That said, did you ever see the way WebOS handle[sd] this cases? The 'synergy' thingy was solving a lot of the friction points you're complaining about - and yet it obviously wasn't good enough to save the platform.