Its interface is worse than WordPerfect under MS DOS! (1990 ?)
noiTisnt :P Microsoft, Apple and many others companies have invested millions of dollars in order to implement unique GUI's for people they don't have time to learn different programmer approaches.
Not always, it depends on how you do things. Personally i hardly ever use icons anyway unless i have to. Guis are alright for the inadept, but most people after a few weeks(mabe even days) of constant use start using shortcuts anyway.Personally i like blenders interface. To be honest I have in he past wasted more time in 3ds max because it looked friendly and logical (but isnt always) so i was tempted to try and sus it out on my own, often wasting days. To use blender, you just HAVE to watch the 5 minute long video that simply explains how the gui works and perhaps the basic modelling, tex and anim tuts. Once this is watched its all pretty intuitive.