I'm with you. "Beautiful" has become a dominant end-goal, promoted by plenty of software/services as a focal part of the product. It's hard to articulate why t

I'm with you. "Beautiful" has become a dominant end-goal, promoted by plenty of software/services as a focal part of the product. It's hard to articulate why this feels objectionable. Perhaps I'm suspicious that emphasising beauty over functionality will lead to dumbed-down products that don't interest me. Perhaps I'm irked that beauty is valued by customers above functionality/reliability/etc, or that the sales/marketing teams feel that's so. Do resources spent on beauty detract from resources expended on improved functionality, reliability, usability, security...? Perhaps I'm concerned with the continuing march of users who can barely operate their many very expensive devices, and the security and support risks that come with this. Then again... who am I to turn back the tide. Perhaps the role of the software developer is to predict "under the hood" problems that come from an emphasis of beauty, and fix them before they happen, to ensure the buttery-smooth experience users expect.