Software is developing slowly..

What's holding us back? The monopolies? That doesn't explain why Unix is hardly any more advanced than Windows.

A topic on /b/ was joking about how you can rename a .doc filetype to .jpg and it will automatically be converted. Why isn't this so? Why hasn't Longhorn incorporated this? This is one of the SIMPLEST features that could have such a huge impact on ease of use.

But how is it that programs today have no more capabilities than those of 1995? When is this going to change?

Such a system of converting one filetype to another by changing extensions would be stupid. Forget ease of use, and worry more about the destruction of information. Converting a word processing document to an image file would destroy stuff like the formatting, editing ability, etc. You could argue that it could then be converted back (using OCR to read the image into an editable file again), but that wouldn't recover stuff like styles and other "hidden" elements. The whole idea is far too complicated, and riddled with such fundamental conceptual flaws as to be completely unworkable.