"We've been complaining for years that Microsoft ships new operating systems with the same boring old default applets"
Who us "we"? Change for the sake of change is, I suspect, not something most people appreciate. Currently, MS is mucking with Notepad, which is just utterly unnecessary.
^ And that mentality is exactly why we get these grueling inconsistencies since Windows XP.
They leave it unchanged because supposedly nobody wanted it changed. Then the rest of the OS evolves and before you know, Windows has 5 different context menus, 3 Settings-interfaces and the group policy editor is still a nightmare to use.
Notepad in its almost never changed form has fan clubs. Word in its constant interface change and feature madness is one of the most loathed applications on earth. PhD educated people spend literally tens of hours of their days every week trying to make it “just fucking format the fucking page and save it without fucking up”.
Who us "we"? Change for the sake of change is, I suspect, not something most people appreciate. Currently, MS is mucking with Notepad, which is just utterly unnecessary.