See the sibling comment to yours; I generally agree with you. The Mac had been doing this since 1984, though as of 1987 it bundled HyperCard, ameliorating the programmability situation somewhat. With the advent of the GUI it seems the tide shifted from "computers are for programming" to "computers are for running normie productivity apps". Nothing wrong with those apps, but unless I have the means to make it do what I want, I don't have a computer. I have an appliance—the dream of Gates and Jobs, all along. Providing even the means to program the thing, or to control it at a low level, became sort of anathema. Which is kind of ironic considering that modern GUIs were inspired by Smalltalk, whose programmability ran bone-deep.