This is nostalgia, you're remembering things as better than they were. Back then there were so many bad UI in software http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/shame.htm
With some OS's you can't even have fine grained control over those defaults anymore. Dark modes have brought some of it back, so its better now than 5 years ago, but still worse than 20 years ago. But people pretend that having a dark/light switch is the same thing as being able to customize the color of just about every layer of the UI and have the vast majority of the applications honor it.