Soapbox time. . .
I've been a scanner listener for 45 years and a public safety responder for 39. When I first joined the fire department, we had one radio channel to use. It was easy and scanning was easy too - all you needed was to plug one crystal in a scanner and away you go.
As time went along, we needed additional radio frequencies because our call for service volume increased and the single channel got way too congested. Plus our alerting tones were being set off on the same frequency used for fireground operations. That's a bad thing - a department down the road was being dispatched to a dumpster fire while we were trying to tell firefighters to evacuate a deteriorating house fire.
As more time progressed, we needed the ability to communicate with other responders - police and EMS. Plus our radio system coverage wasn't the best and since we were a simplex system, we couldn't hear other units talking.
So this means our radio systems got more complex with additional channels and other improvements. Given the finite number of frequencies available, a new creature called trunking came to be.
Thus our once simple single channel radio system has grown into a digital, trunked, simulcast system. All of these changes over those 39 years has tremendously improved our communications capabilities. That improves our safety and makes our operations more efficient. The cost for this improvement in public safety, was it caused challenges for those who like to listen to what we are doing.
As far as scanners go - all they are doing is trying to keep up with what has happened in communications. In other words, scanners are more complicated nowadays because public safety radio communications systems have become more complicated.
While learning how new communications systems (and thus scanners) work can be daunting and intimidating, most folks catch on. I'm as impatient as anyone and can get frustrated when things don't go right the first time, so I can appreciate the sentiment of being intimidated with a newfangled scanner.
But then I tell myself - "If others can figure this stuff out, so can I".
As others have noted, your best options are to get the cabling, programming software (I use ARC XT Pro) and become an RR subscriber. Then you can let your computer do the programming for you. You've already invested hundreds of dollars in an excellent scanner - for a few dollars more you can get the most out of it, with a little effort.