> It's frustrating that everything is going/has gone mobile, because mobile sucks. ... The problem with how accessible "computing" is these days, which really means tablet and mobile, is that now everything has to be mobile first, which makes everything crappier and less configurable.
Yes, I agree that is the problem. Now both mobile and desktop computers are being made "crappier and less configurable". And computers that you cannot program, that take a long time to start, trying to work against you, etc. That is why we must make better software (especially a better web browser than the bad stuff that exists now) that isn't bad like that. That is why I do it too, and not only me, but other too hopefully will do.
Furthermore, I also hate touch screen.
> Technology is just getting worse.
Unfortunately, it is getting worse. Not only programs but also the standards, specifications, etc. They don't design computers for advanced users, but they should do. They add too many animations, DRM, telemetry, advertisement, and other stuff. The software is slow because it is badly written (but it is possible to make a faster program in C). Things that might be useful to display if you can fit on the screen are not actually displayed, instead they make it worthless display. They always put GUI, too big icons/fonts, etc. Things are not properly tested. They try to make the computer believe they know better than you and you cannot enter any good command. They try to stop you operating your computer properly. They will not make good documentation. You will have to use their badly designed software for the TV service and many other things. They design specifications badly, and insist computers to use it. HDMI is bad. USB is bad. UEFI is bad. Unicode is bad (no single character encoding will work for everything, and yet they insist that it will). HTML+CSS+JS is often bad (and they try to use it for everything, which is inappropriate). They still insist to use it, though. Things are patented and that makes it worse, too.
I think that the good design is that the end user has full control and programmability, and try not to add too many animations and other stuff like that, and ensure that it has comprehensive documentation, and don't try to believe that the user is wrong. Do not assume that the user interface is understandable, because without documentation it will not be understandable. Do not make the functions require a lot of menus to access; you can assign a key combination. I think is good design making it UNIX philosophy, is you have enough ropes to hang yourself and also a few more just in case.
One quotation from Steven J. Searle: "The sad fact of the matter is that people play politics with standards to gain commercial advantage, and the result is that end users suffer the consequences. This is the case with character encoding for computer systems, and it is even more the case with HDTV."