I mean, Winamp had skins and plugins more than 20 years ago. Surely it isn't some hopelessly lost skill, like making the roman concrete or the greek fire?!
Skins might also get in the way of showing ads.
This is the TED Talk you're talking about.
(The incorrect Barry Schwartz one I posted is excellent too though!)
I would fine tune that conclusion a bit: it's not that everybody each had their own different individual preference particular to them. It's that there really were specific, objective answers and that it wasn't specific to the individuality of each and every person. But the "right" answer wasn't one but three or four different right answers. But importantly, there weren't Zero right answers, and there weren't infinity. There were three or four.
It said that researchers tried for ages, and at great expense, to find ‘the perfect’ pasta sauce and couldn’t do it. No-one would ever all agree. It turned out you needed to make 3 or 4 versions and different people would find each perfect according to their whims.
This never seems to happen with software though. When Facebook does a massive redesign they (eventually) force it on everyone. Likewise the new iOS or any software update as mentioned in article. It’s always in this quest to find one perfect version, rather than accepting that there is no perfect version for everyone and you have to give different users choices, or at least options!