>> A lamp in the 1920’s had a screw bulb and a switch.

> The bayonet mount is alive in most of the English-speaking world (except for North America). It has been mostly phased out in France but it can still be found.

And right now we're at a time where LEDs are rolled out everywhere, giving much more free hands to lamp designers.

All that is likely to achieve is either very expensive replacements, instead of commodity priced bulbs, as they can be manufacturer specific. Or entirely sealed units making the entire lamp or fitting disposable.

The market and lamp designers have done this already with LED desk lamps and many formerly standard fittings.

This is not progress, and is both environmentally and financially abusive.

Putting LEDs into an E27 bulb is a really bad tradeoff. For maximum lifetime, LEDs need to stay cool. So you want to space them far apart from another, preferrably soldered on a big metal part that acts as a heat sink, and far away from the transformer. Putting everything into a small package is at odds with that.

So a light with integrated LEDs can have a lifetime that's much longer than one with replaceable bulbs.

Additionally, the total complexity is a lot lower for lights with integrated LEDs. It's just not true that lights without replaceable bulbs are less environmentally friendly -- in many cases it's the opposite.

I'm sure that applies, except "lights without replaceable bulbs are less environmentally friendly" which seems nothing more than wishful thinking.

preferrably soldered on a big metal part

An obvious solution to which would be soldering the LED to a metal connector that mates with a heatsink. We could call it an "LED bulb".

Of the assorted LED bulbs, fittings and sealed LED only products I've so far owned few have got to even 20% of claimed life before colour temperature or brightness has become pitiful. The only exceptions thus far are in my monitors (not exactly room level illumination), and in a few year old torch - but that has usage in hundreds rather than tens of thousands of hours.

So it looks like we really need some replaceable LEDs. Manufacturers would, of course, prefer to sell another desk lamp or kitchen fitting when the LED inevitably deteriorates.

> And right now we're at a time where LEDs are rolled out everywhere, giving much more free hands to lamp designers.

You'd think so, but houses still have bayonet fittings so LED bulbs are standardizing on those (or on screw fittings, I guess, in parts of the world that use those.)

GU10 fittings do seem popular with the smaller bulbs, though. LEDs can get away with using these for higher output bulbs because they're so much more efficient.

It is true, that there are still many lamps with traditional separation between lamp and light using a standardized connector.

However the trend shows that flexibility of directly building in long living LEDs is increasing.

Out of curiosity I was just searching for desk lamps on Amazon and first two pages were all LED-bases, which makes sense, since those are all design elements (sometimes of better, sometimes worse designs) where LED gives lot's of freedom.

Looking for ceiling lights gives a few classic connectors, but also lots of LED.

(This might be accelerated since I'm in EU, which banned classic lightbulbs for energy reasons ... over alternatives which are a waste issue)

The fact that alternatives exist doesn't mean the design isn't timeless