A lot of interfaces suffer that fate when they move into the larger consumer space. We face the
Eternal September of test equipment. HP was just tragically ahead of their time being courageous.
Yes, I just compared Rigol and Apple to AOL.
No, that's how you make horrible things like Windoiws8/10, or justify your high consultancy fees.
A lot of user interface design is simple common sense.
Doesn't interface design fall under human factors engineering? Wasn't there a classic book written on the subject?
Microsoft and Apple have been throwing a lot of basic interface principles under the bus for the sake of unifying desktop and portable interfaces. This was just a bad idea and they should feel bad for attempting it.
Apple had already lost the desktop market so they had nothing to lose but Microsoft tried to use their desktop dominance to leverage a position in portable devices. That was great for a majority of new consumers but it sucks for people who want to get actual work done and I expect eventually that part of the market to split off and tell Apple and Microsoft to fuck off. They certainly are not going to release an interface catering to these people despite them encompassing the entire desktop/workstation using population for a long time.
A lot of engineering is common sense. That doesn't mean you can just slap a bridge together. Neither good engineering nor good UX design tend to happen by accident, to paraphrase GeorgeOfTheJungle.
Oddly enough, I know how to slap a working bridge together with common sense. Masonry does not produce an efficient bridge but that is why the Romans were able to do it without engineering. Modern engineering is about building efficient structures and the same might be said about modern product design but efficient for whom?
I laugh now every time I see some product with a stylishly curved enclosure. That is code for "don't stack this because our thermal engineering sucks".