[5bolts]

could there be a licensing issue at play as well? same/similar reason why the brands of computers, phones, monitors are rarely real world versions?

The plus side, kids watching those and growing up to be developers will skew UI's more towards those futuristic versions... same as the kids that watched star trek helped us get the handheld computers we have now.

[Dracophoenix]

I don't think it's a licensing issue, so much as there really isn't anything more you can do with desktop OS frontend's that hasn't already been done. "The future" in those movies from the 80s and 90s involved AI OSs, touchless UIs, interactive holograms, VR, and neurochips/neurolinks as mediums for interacting with the digital world.

So far, we're still at the "fumbling about" stage of VR frontends since VR as we know it today became commercially available to the general public. I doubt we'll to get see the UI for those other technologies mature - if they're done at all - during your lifetime or mine.