Mike,
I gree with the complexity thing and all you've said. But we have to keep in mind that these companies are there to make a profit, and you don't generally make a profit by fixing mistakes, you get a profit by introducing "new" features.

"New" features may be not new, and they may me no real "features" at all, and maybe not cater to all the actual needs of the customers, but they fill all the blanks in marketing's new brochures.

In life, you tend to forget the bad things that happened in the past, so after spending a lot of time with say the PSR 9000, after you buy something new you will quickly forget its shortcomings and keep in memory something good, say its good strings.

In the company I work (software house ) us guys in sales are constantly in "battle" with the developers. We need new things introduced so we can lure customers, they need to prove they are able to do a "fine" job. The truth is somewhere in between.