[ceocoder]

"technology is cyclical" -Dennis Duffy, 30 Rock.

Jokes aside, I do not know if this is me getting older and becoming more grouchy and/or some of the tools (Gmail, Google Search, macOS/MacBook <whichever>) we've been using for a while are becoming more obtuse and less user (or power user) friendly in name of <some product goal>

[jacobr1]

many tools are attempting becoming (and often failing) to become more beginner user friendly. And while that implies dumbing down the tools at times, they still have advance features which are either progressively shown in context, or hidden behind additional advanced user menus or modes. Thus it makes it harder to reason about (as a power user does) and you are reduced to incantations rather than deduction. On top of that there is an increase of change, which prevents one from better learning the system. In effect, to a first approximation, the systems are now non-deterministic. For a causal user, they never care about that anyway and for the best systems, the UX improvements work. But for power-users, the non-determinism is going to drive one crazy.

[raxxorrax]

Agreed. Another negative side effect is that power users cannot help casual users anymore. They become dependent on the developer of the software in question and won't learn about the pipeline of how things are created.

A beverage dispenser has a good UX, but its usage is fairly restricted.