The UI of Blender could be a lot better. 3D Max, Maya, CINEMA 4D, CATIA, SketchUp ... every 3D software has a sane UI that can be used without reading a manual at all. Except Blender with its non standard UI concepts. Hopefully someone sponsors a UI clean up.
It reminds me of Gimp, which had a similar weird UI where every window had its own unique menus and what not. To give them credit, they fixed the UI for the better.
The UI of Blender is excellent. The learning curve is a little steep, but it's also very sort. Once I'm over the initial hump of the non-standard UI, it felt extremely fast and smooth. It's like VIM (if vim had tooltips) for 3D modelling.
The current UI of Blender is fairly good. It is difficult because 3D is difficult. You can remap the keys to resemble other 3D packages and UI concepts. If you try to make it any easier than that, you're removing useful features.
Also, you haven't used ZBrush, do you? At least in Blender the names of things always made sense (object, mesh, scene...). The equivalents in ZBrush are the weirdest things.
That's an urban myth. The other 3D packages (most of them more featurefull) adhere to common UI conventions and guidelines. Like what happens with a left mouse click, what with a right mouse button - all mimics Win95 UI guideline. The other 3D package mentioned are therefore easy to use without reading a manual or tutorial. Everyone who used one of those programs can easily switch to another one.
Blender UI with it's non standard might be productive for certain professionals who invested considerable amount of time. But other packages have customisable shortcuts too, but offer a lot better default settings.
Blender definitely needs a UI refresh to gain more widespread adoption. Too much clutter in the tool bars and menus, navigation works like pre 1995 3D applications.
For many years there was an option to swap the mouse buttons. And it seems you can copy and paste now with ctrl C and V. What are other difficulties?
I tried to use both 3DS max and Blender (the old one which had mouse gestures and a few menus) without reading a manual when I was young. Guess what? I found out how to transform things, select vertices/edges/faces, move them around...
Yes, I had to read the manual to do more serious things, but that's no different than 3DS Max.
Also, part of the reason other apps seem easier is that they add unnecessary features in menus and buttons. For example I saw a release of 3DS max where one of the new things were extending the selection in some way. You could always do that with Blender by combining two more basic features (hide what you don't want to select, then select and extend). I think 3DS is the cluttered one.
Blender has many problems, but the UI itself is not one. Default controls are bad, I admit.
edit: I also admit it's not intuitive to open/save files of other types (having to select the appropriate option in import/export).
It reminds me of Gimp, which had a similar weird UI where every window had its own unique menus and what not. To give them credit, they fixed the UI for the better.