[im3w1l]

I don't think the argument from your first two paragraphs holds in the general case, when there are lots of options.

The first reason is that the user doesn't know which choices have been made for them by the developer. Imagining that the developers made good choices is not hard.

The second reason is that when no choice is given the user, then the developer is responsible. If the application works poorly it is the developers fault, and not the users for having clicked a stupid combination of checkboxes. If the user claims the reply will not be a smug reply how they should have read the manual and made better choices.

The third reason is reputation. If you hear good things about a program with little choice, then you know the devloper made good choices for you. If you hear good things about a program with lots of choices, then that may only mean that it works well when you made all of those choices in clever ways.