I'm a bit surprised you had so much bad experience with the 1911 design Newton, especially with the Kimber, as I've always heard they were rock solid guns. I don't own one myself though. My two 1911s are a Les Baer Premeir II Super Tac, which is simply the finest gun I have ever owned, period; and an original Series 70 Colt 1911. The only things I've done to the Colt are to replace the Collett barrel bushing, which was prone to break and jam up the gun, with a solid one from Ed Brown, and put an extended thumb safety, and beavertail grip safety on it, as well as some Novak sights. Most of the trouble with unreliable 1911s comes from manufacturers who don't build them right, or owners who have compromised reliability by putting a whole lot of unnecessary work into the gun. If it's made properly the gun is superbly reliable.
As for the issue of their being "too many switches", I'm afraid I just don't get it. Really I don't. As others have said, the grip safety is disengaged simply by taking the proper grip on the gun. Some people who take a very high grip experienced a problem with the GS failing to disengage, but that's why the "speed bump" variant of the beavertail GS was developed, and if your gun has that feature, I don't see how you can possibly fail to disengage the GS when you grip the gun. It happens automatically, with no conscious thought whatsoever, and you honestly would have to try real hard not to disengage it. So what's the problem here? I don't get it.
As for the thumb safety, again, I don't get it. It is the most ergonomically perfect thumb safety ever on a handgun. My dad used to have an old GI 1911A1, with the tiny original thumb safety, and even that disengaged very easily. The extended thumb safeties on virtually all modern 1911s fall right under the thumb of the shooting hand when you take the proper grip. If you practice your draw at all (and you certainly should if you carry a handgun), all you need do is wipe your thumb downward as you take the proper grip and execute your draw and the safety is disengaged. Practice it enough, and it will become an unconscious, automatic part of your draw. Generations of shooters have proven beyond any doubt whatsoever that it can be done under stress with no difficulty at all.
The 1911 continues to be popular, especially with elite units like SWAT teams and Delta Force operators, et al., not because of some strange mystique, nostalgia, or "Americanness", but simply because it gives a highly trained shooter the best tool for the job. It's as reliable as any pistol out there (when it's built properly); it's ergonomically unsurpassed; it has as low a bore axis as you can get in a service pistol, thereby reducing muzzle-flip and decreasing recovery time between shots; it has the best trigger, with the shortest pull and shortest reset of any pistol out there, again, reducing recovery time for a shooter who is trained well enough to take advantage of this; and it fires one of the most potent pistol cartridges available. The only real downsides it has are the cost, inseparable from its pre-WWI vintage (it's an old design that demands a lot more machining, and that costs more to do); and the smaller (compared to some other pistols) magazine capacity, and even that's not really much of a problem for well trained shooters, who nearly always find eight rounds more than enough to get the job done.
If you just don't like the gun, well... nothing pleases everyone. But lots of us love it, and we find excellent reasons for doing so.
