"Paycheck" (2003). Ends with them blowing the computer up and destroying the software.

Actually, placing two documents side-by-side requires at least 1920px width to be useful. I challenge you to try to put two documents side-by-side on a 1440x900 laptop screen and have both still in readable font sizes. Now, at 24+" displays with 1920px width, it's a different topic, but most people still have 22" range and even at 1920px width, things will just be way too tiny to be read side-by-side.

Asimov described something along these lines in his Foundation series - a world-organism called Gaia. Is this where this is heading towards? Asimov also included all the animals, plant-life and everything in his system though to make it stable ... ever wondered what your chair is thinking?

This is the normal cycle of software products. A light-and-fast product comes to market to challenge the old and bloated one. Users jump on board. It grows in response to demand (unless the developers have the backbone to say 'no'), and after a while it becomes the very thing it replaced. And then the next newcomer with light-and-fast product comes along, and the cycle repeats all over again. There's very little one can do to prevent this cycle from happening.

It'll just show a 2d 96x128px image but in a way that that can be viewed from any direction (as opposed to current displays being viewable from maximum of 180 degress angle).

I don't see other predators crying over their prey feeling pain when they eat them - why should we?

I believe this comes down to the difference between expected and experienced quality. For a version 1.0, users tend to expect lower quality so they are more likely to be positively surprised (by its stability or whatnot). On the other hand, v6 of some software is expected to be stable, so should bugs arise in v6, users are far more likely to be disappointed (high expectations).