I completely agree. Sweden also gets my vote for the worst country for purchasing tickets. It is by far the most unfriendly railway for ticket purchases in the world. It is like they have purposely tried to make buying a ticket as hard as possible.
SJ have gotten rid of all ticket offices and all ticket machines and all onboard sales. To purchase a ticket you have to go to a supermarket or convinience shop. Sometimes you have to walk a good distance from the station to find a shop that sells tickets. Then the service in the shop varies and some staff take ages to work out how to sell one. I have sometimes spent twenty or thirty minutes in these shops while the cashier works out how to sell one. It is a nightmare. I do like travelling by train when i visit Sweden but the hassle of buying a train ticket always makes me wish i had drove.
SJ also seem to have no fixed walk up prices and the fares are entirely dynamic meaning you have no idea what your fare will cost and it can be different from one day to the next and from one train to the next. I can understand having dynamic priced advances but no fixed price walk up fares at all is crazy. Even their shorter distance SJ Regional local trains seem to be like this.
Some of the private local regional train operators still have fixed prices (normally based on zones) and still sell tickets from the guard onboard but in card only. If you want to pay in cash then again you have to go to some local shop. Only two train operators (Inlandsbanan and Snalltaget) still accept cash for ticket sales onboard. VY Norge still accept cash too on the Oslo to Gothenberg to Malmo route but only in NOK even for Swedish domestic journeys.
While undoubtedly having some of the worst ticketing for long-distance travelling, Sweden has the some of the best ticketing for local or commuter trains.
This argument does contain many caveats, and those coming from countries that aren't as reliant on mobile phone apps and bank cards for travel may have a harder time figuring things out, but if you can get the various apps to work, ticketing for travel within or to neighbouring counties on local trains (at least in Southern Sweden) is exceptional. I understand that this is easier said than done for some, but in Sweden, services are generally much more reliant on you having a card or mobile phone than in the UK, so this is more of a cultural difference in the country, rather than public transport being particularly obtrusive.
The first major caveat is the lack of a centralised mobile app, and while you can at least book tickets to neighbouring counties with each county app, this is still an area that needs a lot of improvement in Sweden. The next caveat before my main point is that none of the ticketing I describe below applies to the long-distance high-speed rail services whose tickets are not bookable within county apps, so for tourists travelling long distances in Sweden, none of the following three paragraphs will be relevant.
In Scania (Skåne in Swedish) - which is the county on the southern tip closest to Copenhagen - and other surrounding counties, tickets are solely based on zones with no restrictions based on time, or mode of transport or direction travelled, and once tickets are bought, they can be activated at any time for use. The zonal element to these tickets means that they aren't tied to any specific itinerary, so the more genrously timed 'single' tickets can often be used for return journeys if you only need to make a quick stop at your destination. There are also no return tickets, which are instead replaced with a 24-hour ticket that's quite sensibly twice the cost of a single ticket. I find these very handy, and while some single tickets are more expensive than I'd like, these 24-hour tickets offer very good value for money, and even more so when travelling with others, as there's a 25% discount when purchasing a ticket that is valid for use by multiple people.
An example of a benefit of this ticketing system, is that the zonal aspect allows you to - say if there is any disruption or delay with your intended itinerary - opt for a regional bus service for part or all of your journey while using your same ticket. This approach also incentivises passengers to use the most convenient and quickest option for their journey, like faster regional Öresundståg services (the regional service linking Malmö/Gothernburg to Copenhagen via the Öresund Bridge) where possible, leaving slower commuter trains to do what they're actually meant to do, instead of also transporting passengers that have been priced off of a faster regional train (see virtually any long distance LNWR service as an example).
Another point (not so much about the ticketing itself) is that the transport authority apps are very good at offering helpful valid itineraries for journeys, and are so good that I don't bother using my usual way finding apps of Citymapper or Google Maps when here, and only use the Skånetrafiken app for wayfinding that involves public transport. It's useful to have an integrated app that I can buy tickets through, that can show correct itineraries for travel that involves multiple modes, and the quality of information shown, like live bus and train locations with a map view, puts apps like TfL Go to shame.
Unfortunately though - warning, a rant about SJ is incoming! -, pricing passengers onto a longer more indirect service still occurs between high(er) speed alternatives such as SJ's fast trains, which aren't included in this regional ticketing, and faster regional services like Öresundståg. This may not be a problem among tourists however, as I've noticed that SJ charge heavily overinflated prices for Öresundståg (and don't even show VY trains!) on their ticketing services, so being the official state railway, many unsuspecting tourists that expect the state railway's ticketing service to not actively deceive them, may opt for SJ's services that seem reasonably priced in comparison to the ludicrous prices that they show for some of their competition.
As an example of the point above is that the SJ website believes that any Öresundståg train between Malmö and Gothenburg costs 432 SEK (£35), which makes their more expensive services seem like a decent enough deal at only 595 SEK (£48). However a quick search on my local transit authorities' app shows that a ticket to Gothenburg that is valid for 6hrs and 45 mins, and for travel in all corresponding surrounding zones (i.e allowing you to take a local bus/train to connect to the Öresunståg train in both Malmö and Gothenburg) and is so generously timed that it would be valid for long enough for a rail enthusiast like me to take a return journey to Gothenburg and back, for only 352 SEK (£29)!
The effect is even more pronounced when travelling with multiple people, where a generously timed and less restrictive single ticket between Malmö and Gothenburg using Öresundståg will apparently cost 864 SEK (£74) for two adult travellers on SJ's website, (conveniently more expensive than SJ's own offering!), but only 565 SEK (£45) when paying through Skånetrafiken.
All in all, once you get the hang of it (which I appreciate tourists shouldn't have to do), some of Sweden has virtually perfect local and regional ticketing, but SJ still manage to ruin it for the long-distance services.
NL is basically a metro network, so yes, tapping in & out when using different operators is the norm