Uhhhh.... holy crap, sorry... but what is the author smoking? I started out with PC's in the early 80's. They were HARD to use (granted, as a pre-teen, I fell in love right away - but I was already a nerd). They were not intuitive. They didn't do very much. They generally sucked for most people, unless they were using a word processor (and even those were tough for some people)
Today, everyone can use one. They are very powerful, do a lot of things, and are comparatively simple to use - I mean, my MOM can use the damn things, which she never could have done in the 80's and 90's. And with very little support for me!
+1, around half of the things the author mentions seems like a pure nostalgia.
Some of the points contradict with each other - he praises having independent OSes (and read-only disks) in one point, and then he wishes for settings to be consistent through OSes.
Also, some of the things he mentions already exist in MacOS, which is weird because he uses an old MacOS as an example. For example one application-one file is still true - most apps are packages, and you can have multiple versions of each app on the same MacOS, and it doesn't matter where you run them from.
Sure, the settings are stored in separate directories, but this was also a conscious decision. In the times of DOS, you had your user files and folders scattered everywhere, and now it's in your home folder.
He also postulates for an abandonment of linking ("each object representing a file, not a link to a file") - that's actually quite interesting. I think it would go badly quick, but a nice idea.
Ah, and finally - no auto updates. Sorry, but if we have persistent internet, we need auto-updates for security reasons. I absolutely hate it at times (especially on Windows), but it's a necessity to keep the security :/
+1 also, I too came through that period, and it was a tricky time, but it was an exciting time as there were many different kinds of computers, and every advance was exciting, knowledge was hard to come by and we heavily relied on books and magazines and other people to find out things. If you went from one computer system to another, was only a slim chance you could do anything unless you had a manual or something to refer to.
Today, everyone can use one. They are very powerful, do a lot of things, and are comparatively simple to use - I mean, my MOM can use the damn things, which she never could have done in the 80's and 90's. And with very little support for me!