One of the great and oft-missing elements of great computer programs is a sense of style. Part of my general dislike of Microsoft products was first put forth by Steve Jobs: they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste
Taste matters, because taste is generally a harbinger of underlying design elegance, and inelegant software is most often crufty, buggy software.
This rule is not absolute, but my own taste runs to elegant software built from elegant, even classic parts. Which leads us to "steampunk" -- What the past would look like if the future had happened sooner.
Wonderful concept - future visions from classic parts. I'm toying with my own steampunk vision, combining SVG, a finite state machine Winstonian rules-engine, and a bunch of other spare parts from the attic. Maybe something elegant will result, many something else.
Keep you posted...