I'm not going to get into your theory, but as a web developer, anything that gets people to move from IE6 is a good thing to me. Like MobileMe, if Gmail is going to be the next huge webapp that helps move the web to a baseline of IE7, I'm all for it. We need the big companies and apps to push the change otherwise it will never happen.

Um.. I'm just going to have to disagree with you on that. You cannot bitch and moan because OS X doesn't behave like Windows or KDE (which are arguably very similar in terms of their needless complexity when it comes to UI paradigms).

Seriously, a + is difficult and somehow unintuitive? How about File -> New, or Command + N?

Or if you'd just prefer a large unwieldy button that ads to the problem regarding consistency and too much shit on the screen with KDE and Windows...

You just can't use a Mac and expect it to be Windows. You'll be frustrated if you can't get over this part. When I got my first Mac in 2004, I used it at the same time as my PC and had similar issues overcoming things I'd expect to behave like Windows. I decided I'd stop using Windows to try to get over the baggage in expectations I'd have, and now 4 years later I go insane having to deal with some of the idiotic UI issues that plague Windows. Just compare System Preferences to Control Panel...