> I'm not convinced that we've seen any meaningful advance in OS UI design since Windows 95. I completely agree there. There have been some small improvements

> I'm not convinced that we've seen any meaningful advance in OS UI design since Windows 95. I completely agree there. There have been some small improvements — XP added recent items to the Start Menu, Vista added search to the Start Menu, 7 improved the taskbar somewhat. But overall, things are still built on what 95 established, and the only overhaul since that was actually released (Windows 8) was a clear regression and Microsoft was forced to revert much of it. Unfortunately though, while the 95-era concepts are still around, the presentation of them is an inconsistent mess now. Windows 10 is full of different UI stylings that look horrible and make the system confusing. I often suspect that people only know how to use “modern” flat UI through sheer inertia, because it's close enough to the old skeumorphic UI that what people learned back then is still useful. But how do new starters figure out what the shapes and colours mean? They don't convey meaning any more.