Nero used to be a simple, but powerful application for CD burning. Over the years, it has aggregated an increasingly complex set of features, making the user interface more and more difficult to grasp for a novice.

Recognizing this, the developers went through multiple steps to simplify the UI while avoiding getting rid of any functionality, no matter how benign:

1. They added a different UI variant that stripped away most of the features: “Express”. Meanwhile, the regular UI remained for “professionals”.
2. Responding to confusion over whether Express offers what the user needs to do, they added a launcher app, “SmartStart”, that automatically opens the right UI depending on the user’s intentions.
3. They added an “Expert” mode to SmartStart, hiding several of its options from the default view.
4. They turned SmartStart into a tabbed interface, and added another tab “Favorites” to SmartStart, allowing you to use commonly used functions even faster.
5. And now, heise reports, SmartStart will even have burning functionality of its own. And RSS feed reading as a “news ticker”. And other such wonderful features.

…and all I wanted to do was burn a disc.