That's kinda the problem, though: Unix really is worse than VMS or Lisp Machines, when measured on certain axes (and I love Unix!); rather than fix it, or replace it with something even better (e.g. Plan 9), the computing industry has instead decided that POSIX is the end-all, be-all of OS evolution, and collectively ignored all the ways that life could be better.

It's very difficult, as I get older, not to survey the computing landscape and be profoundly bitter about our absolute and utter refusal to use better tools in order to achieve greatness. It's like people choosing to eat McDonald's when they could have an affordable home-cooked meal prepared for them, for essentially the same cost.