> power user hostile
Exactly. If by being hostile to us, they're being more accessible to others, I'd say it's a good thing. Now, are they being more accessible to ordinary people? That, as you said, is not and empirical fact and is a discussion worth having. My point is that "we are not important. We're just a tiny fraction of the population. We should ask whether what Apple is doing better for the other %99 or not. Not being 'power-user friendly' is immaterial to this discussion".
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And I agree about the notification center or Settings app. But I see them more as failures in implementation than a failure of vision.
For example of a horrible implementation, Windows (I have experience with Vista and older) gives you a million different options for wireless/wired networking. But setting a global SOCKS proxy is ridiculously difficult: Control Panel -> Internet Options -> Connection -> LAN settings -> Advanced. Or assigning an static IP to a wireless card: Control Panel -> Network and Sharing -> View status -> Properties -> Select IPV4 -> Properties.
Now, OS X's Network panel is just as feature-rich as Windows'. You can do almost everything you can do in Windows too, but the implementation is much better. Creating a VPN, assigning static IP, setting a global proxy, etc. are all easy to access: Click '+' and select VPN, then its type (PPTP, L2TP, Cisco) and you're good to go. Or select Wi-Fi and go to Advanced menu and instead of DHCP select an static IP. Or go to "Proxy" tab and assign a global proxy.
That was just an example that I think OS X's implementation is far better, but the vision (= intention) is the same: Give user the ability to change everything he wants about the wireless connection. Just because Microsoft failed to give a decent UI (at least in Vista) does not mean it's not possible. Just like because Notification center is horrible doesn't mean it can't be done better (look at Android).