I think of it more in the reverse, the choice being removed is the hardware you can use. It has been the case from the dawn of computing that you start from a usecase (which correlates to software, which maps to an operating system) and then look at your options for hardware. The more specific your usecase, the more specific your software, which correlates to a specific choice of hardware. There is no, and can be no, "have it all". It's a fundamental principle of mathematics, the postulates you choose radically change the set of proofs you have access to, and the set of proofs you choose entail the axioms and structures you can take.
Now it can be better or worse, and right now it's never been better. There was a time when your language, your shell and your operating system were specific to the exact model of computer (not just a patched kernel, everything was fully bespoke) and you have a very limited set of peripherals. That we suffer from more esoteric operating systems lagging behind the bleeding edge of extremely complicated peripherals is a very good place to be in. That there's always room for improvement shouldn't be cause for sadness.
I think of it more in the reverse, the choice being removed is the hardware you can use. It has been the case from the dawn of computing that you start from a usecase (which correlates to software, which maps to an operating system) and then look at your options for hardware. The more specific your usecase, the more specific your software, which correlates to a specific choice of hardware. There is no, and can be no, "have it all". It's a fundamental principle of mathematics, the postulates you choose radically change the set of proofs you have access to, and the set of proofs you choose entail the axioms and structures you can take.
Now it can be better or worse, and right now it's never been better. There was a time when your language, your shell and your operating system were specific to the exact model of computer (not just a patched kernel, everything was fully bespoke) and you have a very limited set of peripherals. That we suffer from more esoteric operating systems lagging behind the bleeding edge of extremely complicated peripherals is a very good place to be in. That there's always room for improvement shouldn't be cause for sadness.