I think they did do a lot of this stuff, and probably put way too much weight on it. Someone has a mockup of some tweaked and dumbed down UI that streamlines so

I think they did do a lot of this stuff, and probably put way too much weight on it. Someone has a mockup of some tweaked and dumbed down UI that streamlines some common tasks, and shows it to a newbie user. It tests well, because the stuff they are measuring is the stuff they implemented ("How well can someone find the internet browser? Easy, it's a big fat button! Yay, win."). Then it hits the real world and edge cases and inconsistencies abound, and you don't have the weight of experience and history to fall back on because you have a radical new UI philosophy. So the rough edges persist longer than they should and people complain, and it harms your brand in the meantime. This kind of stuff requires real investment, and investment is hard to come by in the FOSS world.