[jwells89]

This is something I have a difficult time agreeing on. I expect a certain level of information density and configurability in desktop UIs, which shoehorned mobile-style UIs don't do well to provide. Deep modality is also a peeve; on desktop there's often no benefit to burying things in mulitple layers of modals — within reason, the most important things should never be more than one click away and great consideration should be put into putting upwards of 2 clicks between the user and their destination.

That said, I do think it's fine to have a simplified mobile-ish UI as an option, but it shouldn't come at the cost of more classical desktop style layouts for those who can leverage them well.

As a sidenote, this is part of why apps like the mac version of Apple Mail and Thunderbird have a considerable number of hardcore adherents, particularly among power users.

[eternityforest]

There's a number of users who can really make great use of the power user tools, but adding multiple UI options can greatly increase work, because a fully modal workflow might need a completely different frontend, and some apps are meant for the mass market.

Degrading the experience for the majority just to make things better for the power users doesn't seem like it's always the best plan unless you're specifically targeting power users.

In the extreme case, UI for power users can result in production databases being destroyed, or someone getting served food allergens because the menu system made it easy to assign wrong items to wrong customers, or someone's entire family photo collection getting deleted by a single command.