Check-in has improved drastically. Back in the days of boarding pass envelopes with your seat written in sharpie, I'd get a seat that was double assigned every few years.
WiFi
I'll even say the food in Y. A lot of people complain that there aren't meals on long domestic flights in Y anymore. The hot meals in those old days sucked. The game was always to try to guess which special meal was actually edible (e.g. which one would turn out to be a fresh fruit plate) and try to order that in advance. The BOB snacks and light meals today are much better than the old food, and if you have time to make a sandwich (or even buy one somewhere on the ground) you're doing much better than the old hot meals.
Airport food: *way* back in the day, it was generally on par with institutional cafeteria food but at extortionate prices. Everybody got excited when fast food restaurants started showing up at places like MSP and DTW. Now there are (and have been for a while) real sit down restaurants with reasonable food at only slightly extortionate prices.