IMO it's more a product of people expecting more from software. It's no longer enough to have something that works; it has to work and be pretty and user friendly.
I wonder who does that. All my experience with non-tech people tells me that they don't expect anything from software, just accept how it is, but they do get annoyed if it doesn't let them do their jobs quickly. Designing for the needs of normal people seems to go in the exact opposite direction to the current UX trends. When UX trends lead to slow, thin, shiny applications, users would be happier with dense and fast applications which minimize time spent in them.
