At one point of my life I was trying to become a librarian and of the things I should have learned was Information Architecture, which is basically half of your problems and your truths were basic principles there. The less clicks and less time used to get to the desired end, the best. But, yes, it seems like the user experience has been getting more and more "curated" and less open to experimentation/freedom, supposedly the people working on the GUI think that the way smartphones are doing things are better (easier/quicker with less clicks/taps) which also leads to harder to access and change the UI for your needs.
Good video, and, yes windows 98 had the best windows GUI, no need to change whats perfect.