I’d love to see data. For my part the products I use seem to be moving faster, with more small fixes, accessibility better designed in, localization better (even if imperfect) and more rapid releases.

I’m not sure Google, Apple, and Microsoft are the best barometers of AI impact on software engineering. They write software, but at such scale and with such ossified business practices that would expect them to be laggards in leveraging AI.

And things like windows slow context menu are exactly where AI is less useful, because the problem is cruft and the requirment to maintain backwards compatibility with decades of first and third party apps written for older versions. Fixing that is a huge refactoring exercise which AI can do, but which is extremely complex and full of risk.

Same with writing a net new OS: what do you want in the OS? The problem is requirements and market need, not code.