Microsoft in the 1990s had a strong penchant for striking the right balance between power users and the average user. Their products remained full-featured but

Microsoft in the 1990s had a strong penchant for striking the right balance between power users and the average user. Their products remained full-featured but most of things you didn't use day-to-day were quietly tucked away in areas only power users would care about. There wasn't any real notion of compromising usability for simplicity. If you wanted to customise finer aspects of Windows 95, all it would take is a registry entry. If you wanted to use an advanced feature in Office, all it would take is a deep trip inside the menu bar. If you didn't want to do either of these things, they stayed out of your way. Apple later pioneered the notion of making products so radically simplistic, they sacrificed functionality on the pretense that power users wouldn't be bothered by the absence of features. There was almost no customisation. You got what you bought and liked it. Finder, the worst file manager I've ever used as a developer, endlessly gets in your way in the name of not letting grandma mess up her system. Microsoft later badly copied Apple, and the result are horrid and unusable "Metro" style applications.