This is (part of) why I love HN. Loved your "some gaps to fill" article, btw. I still think the underlying limit, though, is the lack of a federated identity

This is (part of) why I love HN. Loved your "some gaps to fill" article, btw. I still think the underlying limit, though, is the lack of a federated identity management system. Certainly oAuth is a huge step in the right direction, and avoids many of the problems of OpenID. But fundamentally, desktop applications are "single sign on". Imagine if you had to log in again to open office productivity software, then log in again to open a web browser, then log in a third time to launch your music player, and once more to balance your checkbook. Clearly SOME people are willing to do some degree of multiple sign-on (Logging in to gmail, then Pandora, and again to open Mint, for instance.) But until these context transitions are much smoother, there will continue to be blocks in adoption even if everything else you address is fixed.