(warning: it's long)
OK, I take all your points and agree with most of you. But to explain, my background is in tech, I write software including user interfaces (though for the web), and have spent my entire career learning new and complicated software (think Autocad, finite element CFD models, etc.). I am not an inexperienced user of complicated software. And I am more than willing to give the benefit of the doubt when it comes to design. I know how hard it is to cram so much functionality into such little space. And I'm not expecting to grok the UI immediately, but I do know some of the components that make a good design.

For me, a good design is all about functionality. I couldn't care less about the color scheme, or skins, or big gaudy buttons. I would love to see a user interface study to see how beginners approach the software, as well as how the veterans use it. I'd be willing to bet most people use the same 10% of the capabilities. The rest should be tucked away--the experts will find the extra stuff, the rest won't even see it. I believe the user interface should get you close to what you want to do and well-organized examples and tutorials should do the rest. This user guide doesn't do any of that, except sort of explain the buttons, but without any context. And though forums are extremely helpful, they shouldn't be necessary except for some of the more esoteric functions.

In general, I believe that the more trial and error one needs to do, the worse the user interface. I've had to do a lot of trial and error and reading forum posts to get what little progress I've achieved.

Speaking of achievements, I am indeed making progress. I'll give BIAB credit: On the first day I was able to do something, even before Charlie Fogle suggested:
a) Type in chords.
b) Save the file so that if something unexpected happens it's easy to get back the chord sheet.
c) Select a style to play your chord sheet.
d) Press Generate/Play.

So again, I'll give credit. But after that, it's trial and error time. The stylepicker gives me the most grief. Even sorting columns doesn't seem to work, but does something random. And on one of the screens there's no "OK" button, so it's hard to undo something you've clicked. That's not intuitive. And what's that row of "Master Bass Guitar1 Drums ..." with radio buttons near the top? It changes, but it took me a while to figure out why. And how does it relate to the mixer thing on the right? And the mixer has something with [None][None][None][None] on it. You gotta admit, that doesn't really help anyone. Why not leave it blank? All that extra information is confusing and we newbies don't know what's important and what we can ignore. And, being a newbie, let's say I picked a style but want to do something different with drums. Should I click the big button that says "Drums"? I guess not, but the interface makes it confusing. Same with guitar. I know it's obvious to you all, but put yourself in the newbie shoes: if I want to do something related to guitar, shouldn't I click the guitar button?

Those are just a couple examples. I know I'm not alone in my experience--I've read dozens of posts saying the same thing, just not with the p*ss and vinegar that I did. My bad. I've calmed down now and have been jamming to my 12 bar blues backing track with RealTracks (I think) and am now trying to record my sick guitar solos over it (sick, if you like eighth notes).

And I don't think I showed any unappreciation for the efforts to help beginners. I do appreciate it and so do hundred of others. The first nice attempts pointed me to some videos that I found inadequate. I'm on the other side, too, as I am a sorta-veteran on another forum where I help newbies like me, so I understand when frustrated wankers like me start complaining about how everything is so haaaarrrrdddd.

I'm making progress and will continue to do so, little by little. I just think the UI gets in the way of using the software, rather than facilitating.

And @VideoTrack, I'm a guy but I appreciate you covering all bases smile