I want to believe you. Got any citations?
I'm a software developer. Just my observations.
Let me elaborate a tiny bit-
For the large portion of the past decade, primary goal of consumer software developers was to add in more features. We got huge monolithic software from large corporations that added everything but the kitchen sink and cost a ton of money. It wasn't until recently we had a proliferation of independent developers and small startups. A lot of it was thanks to the mobile revolution. We started calling them "apps".. they cost $4 instead of $400, and more task focused. Hardware changed... cpu clock speeds hit a ceiling, devices needed to shrink, battery life became more of a concern. Companies like apple and google heavily enforced best-practices on limited mobile operating systems.. practices which eventually trickled on to laptop/desktops, and gradually even becoming apparent even on clunky corporate software.
Software developers can't add better hardware to their customer's computers, so they make it more efficient. If they can't make a software scroll through a hundred images, they can't just expect the next generation of computers to fix that problem.. The average-joe computer is the new common denominator so optimization/performance/refinement is a big priority. "User-experience" is the new buzzword that's here to stay.