Motorola Q: Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory: "Microsoft wants you to open that address book “card” first and then open the menu. "

Interesting. Some of the clunkiness I see in interface design seems to come from where creators:

1. Invent a great metaphor for a task or collection of tasks ("let's treat addresses like rolodex cards")
2. Carry this metaphor through in a manner completely consistent with that metaphor ("consistency is Good Thing mmmkay")
3. End up with a completely implemented, consistency and conceptually elegant metaphor that doesn't let you actually do stuff quick.

Desktops, with their endless drive to take paper concepts and digitise them, seem to be particularly bad for this.