To offer a counterpoint - back then everything in an interface had to be painfully obvious and usable in a myriad of ways because a significant portion of users were computer-illiterate first timers.
As it is now, and forever will be, I think the balance between usability and ease of development will be those 20% of effort to make your app palatable to 80% of the users (barring some exceptions by people with underdeveloped moneymaking sense whose self-description might involve the word "artisanal".)
Yes, you have a point. When IPads/Iphones first came out they were so usable that old people who never touched a computer or toddlers could use them without much direction, they were quite intuitive. They've messed up since then though, they've gone into a dubious direction. And the rest of the industry followed good and bad apple UI/UX decisions, some of them even poorly and we have a confusing mess, confusing and headache inducing at times even for the computer literate.
I find touch interfaces have infantilized computing, turning everything into scrolling and big, fat, ad-looking buttons, and there is no way to really become skilled at them.
As it is now, and forever will be, I think the balance between usability and ease of development will be those 20% of effort to make your app palatable to 80% of the users (barring some exceptions by people with underdeveloped moneymaking sense whose self-description might involve the word "artisanal".)