Fully agreed on the horribleness of real-mode (BIOS) boot, but for others it might be interesting to know why: It was made to boot a relatively simple 16bit com

Fully agreed on the horribleness of real-mode (BIOS) boot, but for others it might be interesting to know why: It was made to boot a relatively simple 16bit computer with a pretty limited configuration space ("do you have two floppy drives or one[1], and do you have the monochrome MDA graphics adapter or the unprofessional 4-color CGA one?"). And then continued to be bolted on, not only by the PCs BIOS but also by the possibility to have secondary boot ROMs on extension cards, over 30 years later. [1] Call it paraphrasing, as I don't remember right now whether you could even boot from the 2nd floppy drive.