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Agreed.

Add these on to Web interfaces, which are increasingly (hullo, Google?) trending toward persistent, non-scrollable header/footer elements, and I'll find myself on websites in which perhaps 25% of my screen is available for my present task.

And that's using an interface which already minimizes browser and desktop GUI intrusions (Firefox/Vimperator and WindowMaker).

The ribbon in Windows Explorer is minimized by default.

Most people also use laptops. Being able to only look at the bottom 60% is especially frustrating.

I wish I could move Xcode4's "iTunes-style" header to the bottom of the window when coding on 13".

Probably not worth complaining about, though... Once you've minimised the ribbons Explorer won't have any more chrome than it did in Windows 7.

Maybe, maybe not. If the past is any indicator, they are targeted at casual users who need the help, and can be turned off.

The biggest icons in that UI are 'Move To...' and 'Copy To...'.

Casual users do not want to think about raw files, let alone how to move them around the filesystem. That is why all modern operating system don't expose these concepts.

You don't fix this kind of problem by making the buttons bigger.