It’s kind of like the Photoshop Problem: when people want to crop a picture, we give them Photoshop. Photoshop is a behemoth application with nearly every image editing and touchup function imaginable, and it is terribly complex. Now Photoshop is an impressive tool, but only a very tiny percentage people need the power it offers. The vast majority just want to crop their ex-husband from the photo and let their friends look at it. But even iPhoto, the poster child for Apps So Easy Your Grandparents Can Use Them, continues to pile on features and complexity.

Very interesting synopsis of the issue here with the recent RWW fiasco. I tend to believe this position is more true than “users are stupid”. Users generally have extremely little incentive to learn and when they do, its as little as possible. What most of us don’t realize is that this is completely rational behavior.