This is a quick, dirty hack job that is the absolute minimum-effort solution. At this point, the only thing that their changes to the companions in the intro has done is stopped our ability to pick Shadowheart's spells (and this hasn't been disabled - there just isn't enough to time between clicking over to her and clicking a spell, to change something before the window shuts itself). Everything else – changing equipment, stripping inventories, etc., is all still very easy to do using just UI that the game presents to us. So what's the actual goal here? What's the purpose?
It's probably just a sticking-plaster solution intended as a temporary fix.
This is a new UI concept that has not had hordes of sticky fingers poking it before patch 7, so there is not much point determining long-term fixes until they have collated and examined the implications of all reported problems.
If it's still there in patch 8, then they probably don't care about the issue.
