quadraginta
Becoming Beth
I don't quite understand why creating a shortcut is "getting into the guts". It isn't particularly difficult. Most people's desktops are full of them. (Although they might not realize it for what it is.)
When I got my first home computer running DOS 2.11 I wrote batch files to automate a number of tasks. Since batch files were not re-entrant one method for passing info from one batch file to another was by setting environment variables as flags. DOS 2.11 had a hard-coded limit of 250 bytes allotted to the environment variables. The only way to change this was to go into the OS with debug and change the code to allot more space.
Now that is "getting into the guts". Creating a shortcut isn't. Especially when the OS pretty much holds your hand during the entire relatively trivial process.
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Mrs. qg is prone to disregard anything that isn't in the very front of the refrigerator. This means that from her point of view we are not infrequently "out of" stuff that we actually have. I once tried to tease her by saying that she needed a fridge which was eight inches deep and eight ft. long so that everything could be in the front.
Now she wants one.
Everything can't be in the front. That doesn't mean it's inaccessible, or even difficult to access. It just means it isn't in your face. The more options a piece of software provides the more depth that is going to be needful.
Somehow the complaint has gone from options not existing to not being one of the ones in the front.
The problem you outline seems to be caused by inadequate training in the first place, since it seems to be a matter of users who haven't been trained to respond to a simple shutdown prompt. (A prompt which exists for a purpose.)
So maybe retraining is in order regardless.
What you are really looking for is a solution which requires less training, or an alternative to adequate training. It has been shown that solutions already exist and are simple to implement. No "getting into the guts" required.
If you are in a position of responsibility for the way these users interact with their machines then perhaps the problem is that you need to implement those solutions, or improve the training, not that the OS is somehow at fault.
Tell me. Is this a really widespread, significant problem which is detrimental to many of users' ability to use their machines?