Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're moving towards minimal formatting, and web-based solutions (like Google Docs). You might be. Some of us have been moving back the other way, after discovering that doing real work using children's toys instead of grown-up tools is inefficient and frequently produces substandard results. People have written entire books specifically on how to present information effectively, on top of a vast body of knowledge ab…
> The fact that a typical web-based word processor today offers only trivial formatting tools doesn't invalidate all of that previous experience and understanding; it just means that a typical web-based word processor today isn't very good at producing well-presented documents. Or it could be that for many people, "good enough" is good enough; they simply don't care about the incremental benefits of "well-presented d…
I don't think there's any "could" about it. What you said is certainly true, and a huge proportion of the most successful web apps have been built on that premise, and there's nothing wrong with that.
However, that doesn't mean those who still need or want something of higher quality are dinosaurs who are somehow being left behind the times. While I understand your music analogy, I don't think the relative differences in quality and flexibility are very similar at all in the two cases.