In most cases, nothing in particular (the file manager is a bit different, as it needs work at the operating system level). But software projects competing in established markets which require many years of development to catch up to “industry standard” tools are hard to get off the ground, because new untested ideas are risky and there are few short-term payoffs. I would love to see new products competing in all these areas.<p>The one I’m most familiar with, Photoshop-style image editors, is based on core abstractions dating from research done on 1970s graphics workstations with far-too-literal adaptations of darkroom photography practices with 19th century ideas about how color works embedded deeply, and there is huge room for improvement if someone is willing to reimplement everything from scratch on better foundations. It’s a several-year multiple-developer kind of effort though.<p>I’m sorry about Apple in particular because it seemed like their Mac application software teams were on a roll from ~1997–2005, but have sort of stalled since then. (Some of what they’ve done since has been awesome, but overall in my opinion there’s been substantially less great stuff in the past 10 years than in the 8 years before that, and many apps feel severely neglected.)<p>I am thankful that Apple (with help from Qualcomm, Samsung, Intel, etc.) keeps pushing the hardware side though. The new stylus, “retina” displays, better battery life in thinner computers and tablets, etc. are wonderful.