[iamstupidsimple]

Software engineering is one of the few middle class jobs available these days. Understandably it's now packed with people desperately trying to live a specific lifestyle, buy a house, etc... rather than a passion for tech for tech's sake. (Not placing blame.)

That fact along with the average piece of consumer software having such low perceived value (try getting people to spend 99p on the app store) and consumer software has become this awful race to the bottom of lock-in and advertising. I suspect business software is much healthier for this reason.

Economic pressures are why we've arrived here.