I mean made for the way people use devices now, as opposed to how they were used in the 80's when Windows and Mac OS started. By "from the ground up", I don't mean a complete rewrite, but at least a complete re-thinking of what an OS should be in modern times. Like when FAT wasn't good enough anymore, let's switch to NTFS and get rid of DOS at the same time. What exactly that looks like, I don't know. I'm not a designer and I don't work on OS development, so I'm not an expert. I can tell you the features I would like in my OS, and maybe you could extrapolate what I mean from there?

I would like it to be responsive, so it best uses the capabilities of the hardware you give it. Windows 8 started, but didn't get quite there. Ubuntu has a nice idea for plugging your phone into a monitor and getting a full Ubuntu install. If I'm tapping, don't make me double tap just because I would normally double click. Recognize that it's a tap and not a click. And don't give me options my device can't handle. Don't show me a desktop on a 7" tablet. Don't default to full-screen apps on a 4k display. And if my monitor is big enough that it could be four regular sized monitors, tile my windows automatically. It's not that hard to do.

I'm tired of starting something on my PC and trying to figure out how to continue on a tablet or a phone, or even just another PC. This could either depend on application developers to support or be baked well enough into the OS that applications don't even know it's happening, but everything should be available to me everywhere. Again, Windows 8 has a nice start with Onedrive, but I still have to manually save things there. Why not replicate my drives so I can access any file from any where without even thinking about it? Make it completely invisible what is local storage and what is cloud storage, and with that, cache things on my hard drive for if the network goes down. If I don't have a connection, everything should be there. If I do have a connection again, everything that happened without a connection should automatically show up on my phone and tablet too. Make Onedrive/Dropbox automatic and invisible.

That's actually an annoyance I have with Github, too. Why do I need to manually commit my changes? When I hit ctrl+s, it should just go straight to version control. If I need to revert later, well, that's why I'm using version control, right?

I don't want to have to boot. I don't want to have to shut down (or wait 10 minutes while it shuts down). I don't want to have to install updates, nor do I want to have to reboot for those updates. Chrome is the best model here. Just push updates in the background and either apply them immediately or wait until the system is idle and apply them.

I don't want to think about anti-virus. Actually this is the one thing Windows 8 got perfectly. I've never thought about putting an AV on my system. It's just there.

I don't want to run out of power. Windows Phone is a great reference system. If power is getting low, start disabling features that drain the battery. I can handle checking email manually if it means I get another hour of battery life. My eyes will adjust to a dimmer display for a little while. Facebook can wait. If power is low, disable the things that I have turned on but am not using.

Now, I know a lot of these features would be very controversial to the HN crowd (since Windows 8 is very controversial). But that's fine. Anyone who threatened to switch to OSX or Linux because of Windows 8 is free to do so. I want a desktop OS with the simplicity of an iPad, but the problem with the iPad is that it's simple, but not magic. Make it magic. I don't want to micromanage my computer. That's why we invented computers in the first place.