It's not just apps. The server side seems to have been rebuilt independent of Google+. Like OP, I'm wondering why Google didn't just find a way to give people o

It's not just apps. The server side seems to have been rebuilt independent of Google+. Like OP, I'm wondering why Google didn't just find a way to give people outside of G+ direct access to the features inside it, which were already pretty good. Google spends a lot of energy on supposedly optimizing UI when the biggest improvement to usability would be to avoid inconsistent and frequently changing interfaces.