Totally agree about XP being the high water mark for desktop, though older MacOSX was good too. The other side of the equation was dev tooling. Visual Studio i

Totally agree about XP being the high water mark for desktop, though older MacOSX was good too. The other side of the equation was dev tooling. Visual Studio in the late 90s to early 2000s was a far superior GUI design system before they ripped that all out for the current XML abomination. I think the real trigger for the fall was the rise of mobile. Mobile seriously cannibalized PCs especially on the low end, so PCs entered this misguided race to try to be more superficially like mobile. Metro resulted from this, as did flat and all the rest of that trash. The new stuff does look a bit better but usability is worse.