[jug]

Windows 98 ran on 16 MB as a pretty enthusiast configuration and it let you browse the web. I recall Outlook was about as capable as now too for most uses (mail, calendar etc).

They say this is happing due to abstraction and saving development costs but I'm not so sure anymore. Windows 11 infamously has large swathes of boilerplate copied around apps that many of their engineers don't even know what it does.

At this point we're far into abstracting abstractions and those abstractions bear their own complexity that may or may not be more complex than what we began with at a fraction of the resource cost...