> My phone still didn't come with a functional paint or notepad apps [...] And you're telling me that this is the only computing platform for a lot of people? How is everything still so unusable about it then?

Not to sound harsh, but you come at this with an somewhat old perspective, the same one I grew up with too and probably also retain too much of.

People don't open their phones looking for something like paint or notepad apps, they want a messenger/social network to connect with their family/friends which is most likely why they got the phone in the first place, and if they're "advanced", they'll even edit their own photos and images but via a whole host of various phone image editors. Sometimes the social network offers those things too, sometimes as separate apps, people use that sort of stuff instead of looking for "paint.exe" or tools to crop/edit images in a more, I guess "crude" way that you and I might be used to and favor still today.