I wonder if this is due to copying (to some extent) MacOS? I didn't realise how similar everything was until I used MacOS for a few years and then went back to GNOME - the behaviour of Nautilus and missing configuration options for part of the system was very MacOS-like. That is, you can't change the default font size for anything on MacOS without installing TinkerTool or something like that.

I stopped using GNOME after they decided that a toolbar was too distracting during the gedit rewrite, necessitating clicking a button first in order to see any useful buttons: https://blogs.gnome.org/nacho/2014/01/15/gedit-has-a-new-fac...

It seemed to be simplifying for the sake of simplification, but that could have been just me.