You mean like Emacs, the comprehensive operating system without a decent text editor? I've noticed this, how most operating systems (or, rather, shells) are st

You mean like Emacs, the comprehensive operating system without a decent text editor? I've noticed this, how most operating systems (or, rather, shells) are structured around running "applications software" to perform specific tasks, and how it differs from computing with Emacs (or Smalltalk, or a Lisp OS) where all of the system is available all the time. You get some of that back in Windows with COM, but even COM was oriented toward siloed applications being able to call into each other's silos. It took Microsoft some time to make even common controls and dialogs available. There were aspects to the Office UI, like the status bar and toolbar, that became table stakes in other applications -- but you had to hand-code them yourself if you wanted them. The Macintosh, or more properly the Lisa, ruined computing. Had Jef Raskin's Canon Cat taken off, we would have seen a vastly different computing landscape.