I would argue that the days of the operating system are numbered.

Software companies are going further towards controlling every level of the user experience. How long before they realise their apps would run 100x better without a system-level OS hogging all the resources, resources the user didn’t ask it to use?

A company like Autodesk could one day start selling dedicated workstations for dedicated pieces of software. In much the same way as you buy a household appliance to do one job (eg your vaccuum) Autodesk might build a backend into AutoCAD that can run straight on top of a chipset without needing a middleware OS running all sorts of nonsense behind the scenes.

Think this is impossible? Nintendo have been doing it for years and been squeezing better results from their software than 3rd parties. Apple built their own chips to take command of every level of the hardware/software relationship.

Autodesk (as the example) might not start building their own silicon (unless an enterprising startup uses ARM architecture to do just that and offer bespoke chipsets to customers……) but there are plenty of customers that would buy a dedicated AutoCAD computer free from the background processes Windows fills up the valuable RAM and processor of your machine with.