You're answering your own question : it's hard to get out of the default elements available to us (checkbox, textbox, etc). They're so fast and easy to use that

You're answering your own question : it's hard to get out of the default elements available to us (checkbox, textbox, etc). They're so fast and easy to use that we don't think about better solutions. But there's something else not mentionned in the article. It's the lack of "innovative users". When people are confronted to a new interface without checkboxes and textboxes, they are afraid and they don't know what to do. We are to blame for that situation because we overuse these elements in all of our applications.