"There’s quite a bit of low hanging fruit in terms of (a) improved image processing that can be done on modern computers that wasn’t possible when Photoshop’s core features were designed 20 years ago,"
That's an interesting area of thought. What things today are the way they are, merely because things were the way they were when the canonical instance was produced?
> What things today are the way they are, merely because things were the way they were when the canonical instance was produced?
Almost everything we interact with is completely path-dependent: our mathematical notation and the organization of our mathematical abstractions, our weights and measures, our language, our cultural institutions, &c.
Or when you get down to it, everything about our bodies and ecosystems.
However, at some point conditions may emerge that allow you to leave the trodden path, which I think is where you're looking now. These are not our dad's computers.
That's an interesting area of thought. What things today are the way they are, merely because things were the way they were when the canonical instance was produced?