Ribbon UI is not an example of a clean UI.
It’s mostly organisation, prioritisation of frequent tasks and the removal of clutter – things I think modern UI’s have done pretty well. They are also moving towards cross platform standardisation which is the bases of and good user interface.
I think your main complaint is Magic meat navigation, which has been around since the beginning of the web in different guises. It’s a problem, but text heavy interfaces have there own issues, (ease and speed of ID, clutter) so it’s a trade off.
