I think we have two groups of people to blame for this phenomenon: (A) "Novices" who get confused when presented with more than a handful of buttons, because t

I think we have two groups of people to blame for this phenomenon: (A) "Novices" who get confused when presented with more than a handful of buttons, because they never bother to figure out what those buttons do. BTW, what's a browser? You mean Google? No, I use Bing. (B) "Experts" who don't care whether or not there are buttons in the UI, because they know where everything is hidden, and they use keyboard shortcuts anyway. Meanwhile, everything Apple does must be the One True Way. When Group B makes software for Group A, you get the results you're describing. Caught in the middle are a large number of moderately proficient users who rely on explicit visual cues (buttons, arrows, menus) to perform tasks.