I think that’s mainly because we have UI/UX as a dedicated function now. It’s a job that seems to attract people that don’t know how software _works_. This results in “uncanny” UX that looks similar enough but just doesn’t work the way it should.
Maybe I’m just getting old though!
Overall "betterness" is subjective, but speaking as someone who uses a computer as a tool I can honestly say I'd prefer it to function pragmatically than look pretty, if the prettiness requires sacrificing of pragmatism in some way.
A good ui/ux specialist will be interested in reducing error rates and improving ease of discovery and use through affordances and good organization of information and actions. Obviously other business interest may conflict with those goals but those same interests are capable of corrupting engineering as well.
And I don't think ui/ux work is as recent as this is all making it sound. Perhaps it is more common now even for orgs where their bread and butter isn't software but ultimately making tools useful and safe and accessible predates software entirely.
As evidenced by the discussion here, there seems to be far more of the former than the latter.
When I am faced with the challenge of designing an interaction in software, I always try to make it fit established patterns.
Now I'm working with a UX expert. The interaction designs I receive are just not right. They are not intuitive. I am rather disappointed. My impression is that this expert is simply not an expert PC user. Of course, that's N=1 as far as my professional work is concerned.
Furthermore, in the last… 12-15 years, more and more software seems to change just for the sake of change. My personal opinion is that this is because of designers trying to justify their existence.
So many of the complaints about the dominance of seemingly-incompetent UX professionals really boil down to failure to consume one's own dog food. The UX pros are not incompetent at UX design, but they are unfamiliar with the tasks that the program will ultimately be used for, and that's even worse.
This phenomenon is more widespread than most people realize, even here. If you buy a new Porsche 911 today, you'll find that the garage-door opener button has been moved to a touchscreen menu. People who take a bus to work are now designing Porsches, in other words. It's only going to get worse from here.
Yes, there is flawed design: that covers most design, in the same way there is flawed programming, which covers most programming, and flawed approaches to business which covers most business, and so on.
[edit] the feeling I get from the threads here is that many commenters don't get that most design involves huge tradeoffs, same as programming. Design training is not "make a pretty thing" (which is what many commenters seem to be dismissively suggesting, which is actively offensive), Dribbble is really not reflective of actual design, and much of what you see is surface driven by designers having to find tradeoffs to deal with management edicts/commercial goals/technical limitations that may conflict with otherwise good design
The programs used to ask for a file name before saving it somewhere. Programs with modern UI/UX just save the file to a random place and then you have to search it.
The browser saves it to Downloads, or to the Desktop, or perhaps to the home folder.
The GNOME screenshot tool saves it to the home folder
The GNOME audiorecorder saves it to somewhere else
The the control center... changing audio source - fine motor skills required if you ever find how. Long pressing things means its faster to do things from settigns.
My pet peeve is macos Photos. Forget ever watching your videos for which storage you pay. It just won’t play until you click edit which is gonna just crash app about 10% of time. If it doesn’t it takes 5 minutes to download at like 10mbps.
I would even consider it by design - management doesn't want apps to be deleted so easily. It's a subtle nudge for a user to accumulate apps, which slowly increase and eat up disk space.
The justification is that if no one deletes apps often, the button to do so should be hidden away, so users don't "accidentally" delete an app. And the designers are just a cog in the wheel - they listen to the objective given to them by management and do exactly that.
This is why you see great designs from apps that are written/made by a single person, or from a small team that cares. One such example is IDEs like Intellij - the UI/UX design is very much geared towards developers (by developers).
Everyone has an opinion on design, including stakeholders and management who their jobs depend on. I think all the engineers here don't realise the privilege of having their own impenetrable domain.
On macOS you can usually just drag the .app file to the Trash.
We live in a world of Frankenstein UIs and it's not the designer's fault what ends up on your screen.
If you want to make a historical comparison, I'd argue that it's more likely to be in the way of working of today vs back then when UI design would get locked in much more _or_ get truly designed along the way with the product needs.
That's why "we live in a world of Frankenstein UIs". We don't need "utopic designs" but rather consistency. Both in visual language and interaction design.
There are a few notable exceptions like HMIs on industrial machines or a car's entertainment system.
Of course, incorrectly implemented design exists, too. No doubt about that.