You can see this trend in most technology products. Increasing subtleties and functions are added improving what a product can do. At some point, the complexity is sufficient to force us to focus efforts on simplification (or the benefit great enough that a simpler technology will take over) - while maintaining functionality. Classic menus migrating to context-sensitive menus; the original NES controller, to the xbox controller to Wii and Kinect control, Yahoo’s list-the-web, to Google’s search the web, multiple glasses to photochromic glasses, and so on.

I believe this observation is from Edward De Bono, but I learned it from Darrell Mann. I keep finding it helpful.

Things get more complex before they get simple

Every time we go I think, if you were to try and design the perfect toy it would have many of the remarkable attributes of a beach - particularly the self-tidying feature. At some point I should stop thinking that and just enjoy the beach.

Beaches: amazing for play

A nifty technique for making fonts appear smoother when viewed on a screen rendering pixels.

Anti-aliasing