[...] If you designed in a dual transistor few years back, you are also out of luck. [...]
Yeah, I wonder why they disappeared? - actually rather handy...
The "good stuff" gets all replaced by more or less "one special purpose" IC, that the manufacturers can sell with higher margins to inexperienced (younger, fresh from university) engineers. I was told this statement (not by the words, but in this sense) by some TI (afair) FAE / marketing guys when I asked why the heck they have that many very specialized IC for similar purposes. Yes, they want to you to get lost in their selection lists, then ask them for help, which they'll gladly offer to you, and then they'll select a device that is good for their revenue.
Inexperienced? I wouldn't say so. I design in quite a lot of special purpose ICs, like load switches instead of passive parts and a tiny FET. Or a shunt amplifier instead of a general purpose opamp and the passive parts. It's not like I cannot design in the older general purpose part. I don't have the time to do so.
I would say it is inexperienced (people who call themselves) managers that are responsible. In the past 10 years, I never had the luxury of testing a board completely, or to investigate more than one solutions to a problem. Everything is needed yesterday, the client is waiting for it. I cannot say, yeah, I used an LM358 and some resistors and transistors, but I have to spend 2-4 days characterizing the circuit, maybe place a few in a thermal chamber to make sure that it works in worst case temperature conditions.
No, what I'm going to do is place there an INA193, that costs 3x the price, that has 100% characterized performance. And my testing will be 5 minutes. I honestly couldn't care less if the product cost more because of this. I drew the triange of cost-time-quality every single project, and they always choose all three, which doesn't work that way. Since the only performance indicator of my work that they are measuring is time, I'm just going to choose whatever is the most convenient for myself.