But I feel we need only point to Microsoft Word as an example of how the statement.
>Everything was so clear, neat, and discoverable back then
just isn't true. The only difference now is that we have dozens of pieces of software in our lives now instead of the half dozen we used in the 90s, and we don't have one company monopolistically decreeing what the status quo of UI design is.
Meaningful competition is also why I think there is no WIMP in mobile. And that's a double-edged sword.
Press some hot key, and then type the name of your command in a pop up window with full-text search, autocomplete and a hint what the hot key and toolbar icon for that particular command is. Probably single most useful thing that became mainstream roughly after the ubiquitous CLI-phobia mostly went away.