Comment by golergka

As computers, and smartphones got more popular, the audience got larger and the use scenarios got more and more distant from professional use. Dedicated professionals, like software engineers and stock brokers still prefer CLI and Bloomberg terminal even today. Ordinary office workers late 90s and early 00s window-based interfaces (the ones you're talking about). But smartphone users who just want to play their free games and scroll through facebook actually prefer the mobile-first UIs.

If you see this UI transition through the same lense as CLI-GUI one, a lot of things become more clear, in my opinion.