I see your point, but I'm less anti the use of "click".
Firstly because of the acceptance of "click is to web as dial is to phone", that the term "click" as a verb meaning to follow a navigation link or interact with a button, or generally interact at all with something on a website or app. I think this is useful and should be encouraged [0].
Secondly because it was used in the first place because it was very clear instruction. "Download" by itself assumes that the user knows how to download, and if the UI element isn't clear that it's a link or a button (or interactive) then that's not obvious how that should happen. "Click here to download" is much more clear, obvious, and helpful. I think it was old-school SourceForge that had "Download" buttons that didn't look like buttons, and ran adverts that had very prominent "Click here to download" buttons, and that ended up being very confusing and getting a lot of people to click on shitty ads.
Thirdly, and purely as a matter of personal taste, I don't subscribe to the design philosophy that less is better. I prefer clear instructions to ambiguous ones, even if that means more words. The impulse to surround everything in whitespace, remove scroll bars, and make it look pretty at the cost of usability should be discouraged imho. A button should look like a button. It should be clearly labelled with what it does, or what you need to do to make it do the thing. I realise I'm in a minority here, but that's not unusual.
[0] though maybe the new verbal usage of "I'm double-clicking on this concept" to mean supporting it is probably a bit much.
Firstly because of the acceptance of "click is to web as dial is to phone", that the term "click" as a verb meaning to follow a navigation link or interact with a button, or generally interact at all with something on a website or app. I think this is useful and should be encouraged [0].
Secondly because it was used in the first place because it was very clear instruction. "Download" by itself assumes that the user knows how to download, and if the UI element isn't clear that it's a link or a button (or interactive) then that's not obvious how that should happen. "Click here to download" is much more clear, obvious, and helpful. I think it was old-school SourceForge that had "Download" buttons that didn't look like buttons, and ran adverts that had very prominent "Click here to download" buttons, and that ended up being very confusing and getting a lot of people to click on shitty ads.
Thirdly, and purely as a matter of personal taste, I don't subscribe to the design philosophy that less is better. I prefer clear instructions to ambiguous ones, even if that means more words. The impulse to surround everything in whitespace, remove scroll bars, and make it look pretty at the cost of usability should be discouraged imho. A button should look like a button. It should be clearly labelled with what it does, or what you need to do to make it do the thing. I realise I'm in a minority here, but that's not unusual.
[0] though maybe the new verbal usage of "I'm double-clicking on this concept" to mean supporting it is probably a bit much.