What came close was the smartphone (and a bit later, tablets); one big one is that they did not support Flash, which (at least in my neck of the woods) was an important factor in the shift towards webapps / SPA's. At the same time, browsers / JS became faster, NodeJS became a thing, and because of both apps, webapps and REST interfaces, the inefficiencies and insecurity of HTTP came to the forefront, leading to (more, easier, accessibe) HTTPS and HTTP/2, and now a push to UDP-based protocols like quic / HTTP/3.
Anyway, smartphones / tablets have made us rethink hardware, its developments have led to more compact laptops as well, and the push to more compact laptops have caused their manufacturers (mostly thinking of Apple throughout this comment btw) to eschew legacy systems - disk drives, USB ports, even 3.5mm jacks all went out the window.
But that is exactly what you're proposing here; what did you think when Apple got rid of a lot of that legacy? Personally I have mixed feelings; I do like USB-C. I didn't like Lightning because it was nonstandard, but it was an improvement over their broad connectors and USB-C wasn't a thing yet. I can see why they're pushing to wireless connections for audio and input.
Anyway final point, despite the cut in legacy connectors and the like, Apple's hardware hasn't gotten cheaper.
But smartphones - both iOS and Android - take their core operating systems essentially from the 70s. The kernels themselves are few decades newer than that. The concepts and interfaces implemented by them, however, are not. Similar things can be said about Windows Phone and NT.
Arguably, using an existing OS as a base was kind of the only way to get these products done in a reasonable timeframe. They run complex and powerful software and writing that stack alone is hugely demanding. Rewriting the OS would easily have lost the market to the competition because of cost and time overruns.
Anyway, smartphones / tablets have made us rethink hardware, its developments have led to more compact laptops as well, and the push to more compact laptops have caused their manufacturers (mostly thinking of Apple throughout this comment btw) to eschew legacy systems - disk drives, USB ports, even 3.5mm jacks all went out the window.
But that is exactly what you're proposing here; what did you think when Apple got rid of a lot of that legacy? Personally I have mixed feelings; I do like USB-C. I didn't like Lightning because it was nonstandard, but it was an improvement over their broad connectors and USB-C wasn't a thing yet. I can see why they're pushing to wireless connections for audio and input.
Anyway final point, despite the cut in legacy connectors and the like, Apple's hardware hasn't gotten cheaper.
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