"John R Weiss" wrote
There may be a lot of differences between single-pilot and 2-pilot
operations, but a lot of "airline" concepts are very applicable/adaptable to
current "typical" GA equipment... I've flown IFR in GA, single- and
multi-pilot military, and [currently] airline aircraft; the basics remain
the same regardless of individual procedures.

Well, when you get down to it the basics are always the same.
However, procedures optimized for a well-equipped crew-operated
aircraft may well be suboptimal for a single pilot private aircraft.

These days, GPS is more typical than strange in GA, especially among
IFR-equipped airplanes, and most of them have more capability than airliner
installations! Once you get away from the very low end (IFR-equipped 172s
and 182s), you're likely to see a 2-axis autopilot as well.

I don't have two-axis autopilot (no altitude hold), and neither do
most of my friends. BTW, I fly a twin and so do most of them.

There's also a huge difference between a copilot and an autopilot. A
copilot can be given the plane; an autopilot can't. GA autopilots are
all single-gyro dependent; none of them are immune from going hard
over on the controls in seconds if a gyro or an associated
curcuit/connection fails. I consider my autopilot to be the most
dangerous piece of equipment in the airplane, and normally will not
even turn it on in IMC. Mostly it's just a way to reduce workload and
let me rest on long boring segments.

Further, those who have an IFR-certified GPS NEED to be "geared towards"
their equipment

I agree. This is a big problem with IFR-certified GPS. The user
interfaces are highly constrained by FAA regulation. If one of my
programmers turned out something as klunky as a KLN-94 user interface,
I would fire him. Even the GNS-430 has more quirks than I am
comfortable with.

On the other hand, lots of handheld GPS units offer great
functionality with a user-friendly and pilot-intuitive user interface.

Michael