"It's the user experience, stupid"

Does software needs to look ugly?
Relevant question, because most of them actually do!
However, this may change faster then expected according to the article below.

'It's the user experience, stupid'    ZDnet, 8th of May 2006
'A friendly face of business software'    BusinessWeek, 3rd of May 2006

"Good design is becoming more than a nice-to-have feature. Thanks to slick Web sites like Amazon.com, people are coming to expect software that takes no or little training to use."

There is a never ending list of Property Management Software, but have you ever seen a well designed one?