Why did I move from ecco pro to onenote? Because I want something that automatically syncs to all my devices, easily searches across a decade of notes and lets me get things done from my phone. Onenote’s low quality outline authoring experience is trumped by its networking features.
This for me is the key: we expect tools to live on the network. All those apps of old, they were based around files, their business models were based around buying files, and they targeted one form factor and often only one OS. We need tools based around networks, not files, that target every form factor and every OS, but doing that costs a lot of money to rent servers and build frontends, and that means we get locked in saas products. Tons of saas products, all solving the same set of problems on the network but doing it through a web interface because it allows them to write once and run everywhere.
What would really help is a free substrate for networked open source products. If you could deploy something cloud-native without having to pay for servers, you’d see more community and native apps and less web saas in the productivity tools space.