Just in general its nice to have an interface that highlights the right features and makes it clear what is a button, what is text and the sort of interactions I will have before I click on it. All the research on UIs done in the 70s and 80s seems to have been abandoned in the pursuit of a new look that is less easy to understand.

The amount of time wasted in Windows constantly changing the interface skin (especially the new taskbar that has lost a lot functionality in Windows 11) instead of fixing core issues in the OS or expanding elsewhere is a concerning cost of human time. I suspect many people buy "pretty" rather than functional but its kind of annoying the amount as an industry we waste on trends that achieve nothing other than a make over.

Yeah, I wonder if these trends the author is picking up on (i.e. "Millennial Boring on Purpose" and "Millennial Minimalism" vs the Gen-Z "Excitement" and sparkles) is more of an actual age thing vs. a generational thing?

I'm still in my 30s, and I prefer the Millennial Minimalism now, but I didn't always. And I find myself bumping up the font size to 125% once in a while - and I expect to be doing it more and more as the years progress.

Eh, as a Zillenial, I like it when my eyes don't hurt so I'd probably use that mode too

Yeah. Part of the same simple/spare design fashion is small grey fonts.

Boomer mode is when there's 13 advertising popups all over your screen and autoplaying videos on full volume.