I think it is a little hard to blame it on the "nerds" and "geeks". People don't often realise how removed we, the people actually writing the code, are from the decision making and how many people are involved. The request for change will have come from on high, the UX and UI guys will have come up with loads of wireframes and we'll be expected to implement them along with any other bug fixes or "technical" changes.
I'm not excusing Microsoft but this is what you get when you use proprietary software...
If it bugs you that much get a VoIP account with someone like Sipgate and download some open source VoIP software. If something changes or doesn't work, submit a bug report on Launchpad... Sorted.