Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So, yes, someone did ask for it - the IT industry. ... who couldn't use the well-known mature shell tools since they were locked into a closed platform, and Windows' cmd.exe was comparatively very weak.
It wasn't cmd that was the problem (although, it is weak); it was how Windows exposed APIs to allow automated solutions. You had two options: VBScript (which is a glorified COM+ agent) or a "real" programming language like VB6/C# which mixed COM+ with Win32 API calls (which are too hard to use for most non-programmers). Powershell within itself does improve CMD. But that isn't primarily how PS pushed Windows automati…
Kind of depends on how you define improved. I find powershell slow enough that I usually still use cmd unless I'm dealing with a powershell script.