I believe that one area the author's criticism mostly applies to is that of business applications. I've been working as a user and developer in such field and

I believe that one area the author's criticism mostly applies to is that of business applications. I've been working as a user and developer in such field and I see a number of advantages of older applications (and even those text based ones) over the more recent web based ones. Newer technology for web/mobile user interfaces is great, but it shouldn't be the "default" approach, in my opinion, and I think that they are at the heart of that overall disappointment with many applications. They are harder to build and maintain; they are less constrained, leaving room for "creative" deviations from core functionality. In summary, we are spending lots of resources on something that eventually destroys value. I'm aware of a number of anecdotes about companies with 30/40 years old systems beating newer ones in terms of user speed. This, in conjunction with the fact that they are cheaper to develop, is a very strong evidence that we are doing something wrong.