But when I start feeling like I can’t use your software without tweaking settings, then there’s a problem of some sort or another. Maybe you need to add a feature, maybe I’m not the exact target user … or a number of other explanations. But it’s a symptom of a problem. (usually at least that the defaults aren’t good enough)

I want a developer who understands the problem so much better than me, that their choices in features guide me. A developer that _tells me_ what I want. Because I’m too stupid to decide what’s best for me (most of the time, as a user, this is true … you’ve studied the software and field-of-work at least 10x as much as I have, you’ve simply put more thought into it)

A good way to cater to everyone is how Adobe’s CS suite does it. You can decide whether you are Drawing, Animating, etc. and a preset of panels and tools is opened. The things they observed (through metrics) that people use most in unison when doing certain tasks.

This is much better than forcing me to figure all of that out by myself, or putting more crap on my screen than gets used in unison.

The question is…

Does it have to be like that?
Could you not cater to the long tail as well?

Arguably you have to sink quite some time into catering to them as well, the configurators, the “meddlers”.

Maybe you are overstating.
Have you never been happy enough with something at first, some kind of setting, and then later, after some time, wanting it to change ever so slightly, even in a major way. What you want from the developer here is an un-natural amount of foresight. You expect him/her to know what you want in advance.

The other side of the spectrum is simple to define: Apple. Walled garden, taking the default configuration to the point where the user is trapped. No choice…