Not sure how much actual conspiracy is in there, but I've definitly noticed that the gap between "consumer software" (highly optimized for ease of use but also highly limited and designed with a specific intention how users should interact with it) and "professional software" (powerful and flexible but only usable after extensive training, often command-line only) is widening instead of closing.

There are also definitly conscious design descisions how "cryptic" a particular feature should appear to users. I remember several bugzilla threads with discussion whether a config option should be exposed as an "ordinary" field in the settings or only as an option in about:config, so that normal users won't find it.