Why can't an address be created that you associate a password with like Bitcoin?
It's just a different approach.
Either you have wallet.dat file with private keys which you must hold in dark cold place, affraid of viruses, bad blocks and your mom cleaning room early morning. Or you have just long passphrase associated - in your brain olny! - with some good old times when grass was greener and light was brighter... oh, nevermind
Both ways have some weak points, both required to understand things, both give you good ability to lost everything you have.
And I not even speak about thermorectal cryptoanalysis!
Ha, very nice! I agree with you, both have weak points. People can stress about a wallet file on their desktop that could be stolen, destroyed with the computer, etc.. I think there are ways to improve security with Nxt model, such as limiting unlock attempts per minute for a specific IP, or perhaps locking a specific Nxt address to an IP as an option for the user, so you could only login from a specific IP address, etc.. There is room for improvement and the good thing about Nxt is you won't get the online hosted wallet thefts like BTC is seeing.