I remember talking to a friend who owns a Mercedes recently and he was telling me how he had to take his car into the shop and they gave him a fancy loaner (an ML 63, IIRC). He talked about all the cool gadgetry in there like blind-spot monitors, side rear view mirror wipers, and such.

He also mentioned that the cars are pretty much impossible to work on on your own since you need to have the right diagnostic equipment, as opposed to a car one might have bought 15-20 years ago, where a good manual was all that you needed to get into the thick of it.

While I agree that knowledge of the inner functioning should not be required for using a product, I think that it would be nice if there was some sort of effort made to allow one to poke inside. I am guessing that with Chrome there will be some sort of setting that you can use to undo this change (I use Firefox, and rarely, but occasionally, use the about:config tool).

This concept is something I've been playing out in my mind and that I'm starting to explore in my programming. A simple interface that "doesn't make me think" (me being the user), and a well-tucked-away "Advanced" button that, having given the proper warnings, allows the user to poke around on the inside.