There's been a strong push in the community recently to make the UI more approachable. What makes Blender difficult to learn is that most of its tools are eith

There's been a strong push in the community recently to make the UI more approachable. What makes Blender difficult to learn is that most of its tools are either hidden in an obscure menu or behind a hotkey. This has begun to change in the 2.6 release cycle. A couple versions ago the Blender foundation introduced a new tabbed layout where commonly used features are organized and prominently displayed in the properties panel of the 3D viewport. This was done primarily to ease the learning curve for new users. I'd like to think its the start of a new trend. That being said, one of the things I like most about blender is that the UI is designed for productivity over usability. Building the user base by decreasing the barrier to entry is a definitely a good thing, but it shouldn't take precedence over the effeciency of the UI.