There is always something new to do with any piece of software. As new features are added, there are ways to turn them on/off and after a few releases, you need an expert or a large manual to operate the software. Having a good set of defaults for all the various possibilities comes a long way to make it easy for an average person.
What about removing features? When should a feature be removed? Is “Never” really an answer? May be when 99% of users are not using it? Is it really based on how many users use or don’t use it? At first glance this seems like a good idea. For example, Firefox had a fix starting release 23 to get rid of the ability to autoHide a tab if there is only one tab (855370). The filer said “In this day and age, browser have tabs, and hiding the entire bar is useless and in addition causes problems with the new Australis theme.” I don’t know about the problems it causes for Australis theme but may be it’s worth solving that problem rather than taking a shortcut. On the other hand, let’s ponder on the first part… In this day and age, no one uses browser without tabs? That may very well be true (let’s assume so).
But I have a usecase where I want to disable it. I am looking at the possibility of having a browser display some interactive app on a touch-screen television and in full screen mode I don’t want that single tab to show. But I can’t hide it. Now, it’s not that this is a common use case or that there are not many users who want it. It’s simply the ability to provide a full-screen view where you don’t see other controls like tabs, period.
So, next time you are thinking of removing a feature, be very careful about it.