Does user interface really matter?

I've been using a few programs for...well, not all my life, but probably since the beginning of 2000s. While there are a lot of different programs to choose from for everything you do these days, what is it that makes me use one or the other program or app? As one thing it's definitely the features it has, the features that you need, but at least for me it's definitely also about the simplicity and about the features they don't have.

Imagine you need a text editor, a simple one, something like Notepad, but slightly more powerful with a handful of extra features. I have to admit that I have actually tried more than a dozen of them and I'm still sticking to just one main one for everything I do. It's Editplus and I've been using it for over a decade. The reason why I initially downloaded it was simple - as I do a little web development I needed a simple text editor with Remote open/save feature and this one had it. And it's also a nice option to use for html/php editing (while still hard coding, no WYSIWYG). The newer versions of it have more and more features, but I think I'm still using the old version from 2003 or something (version 2.2 while the newest one is 5.1). Simply because I like the simple interface without too many things that bother me. It's the simplicity of the interface I like.

I've always been a Windows user, but again like a decade, I've been using iTunes for listening to music. I've tried a number of other programs as well, but while iTunes definitely isn't the best for everything, I like the simplicity of the interface, and it does exactly what I want to do - play music.

Around ten years ago I felt I could use a project management program for myself - or something sort of in between a full project management program and a digital todo list thingy. Of course, I created one myself. It looked neat, had enough options - projects, tasks, timers, drag and drop features, and what not, but this system doesn't exist anymore, because at some point I realized I don't really need anything like that. So what do I use today to coordinate my work? Remember I mentioned the text editor Editplus? Well, that's what I am using now. Just one text file. In there I have everything from "Todo Today" to "Unpaid payments" to "Ideas for tomorrow" to...well, anything else. And that's enough for me. That's the easiest. Often we tend to over-complicate things because it looks cool, and by the end of the day, it's not making anything better but actually the opposite.

I often also play poker and I have really seen a number of different poker rooms with different looks. And what I can say based on experience is that some of them seem to have been made for playing, while others actually seem to have been made for gambling. I couldn't say for sure if that's the actual case, but that's the impression. What I mean is that some of the poker rooms look easy on the eye, they are nice to play on, no distractions. While other rooms, trying to make their room look as cool as possible, only end up making it so graphical, or so colorful, that it's actually annoying. As mentioned, maybe they are intended to be like that, but then again, a poke room usually doesn't earn money from people making stupid decisions because of annoying interfaces, but instead they benefit from long plays. Take two people playing heads-up poker - if they play one hand and one of them takes it all, the poker room gets rake money just for this one hand. At the same time, if they played for hours without either of the players going bust, the poker room makes hell of a more money. You can find more info on which poker sites might be good to play on at Poker Sites 101.

By the end of the day, two programs or apps with the exact same features and even with the exact same layout might have a huge difference. And the difference is UI. UI matters a lot. And it doesn't even matter what we are talking about - a text editor, poker room, project management software, or a car radio.