This neatly illustrates another problem with redesigning popular software: no matter how much time you spend, no matter how beautiful you make the design, the people who're already using it are used to its current layout, and don't care about learning a new interface.
If you could give people a completely fresh, unprejudiced choice between Gnome 2 & 3, Windows 7 & 8, or Firefox 3.5 & 18, I bet many of them would choose the newer version. I don't think (most of) these UI decisions are objectively bad, and over the long run they might even pay off. But when the user upgrades and suddenly can't see how to make it Frobnicate, they get angry.
After you've learned hundreds of interfaces over 3 decades, you learn that newer can be, but isn't always better. So when I see YAIR, (Yet Another Interface Redesign), I get a case of deja poo, (I have seen this shit before).
If you could give people a completely fresh, unprejudiced choice between Gnome 2 & 3, Windows 7 & 8, or Firefox 3.5 & 18, I bet many of them would choose the newer version. I don't think (most of) these UI decisions are objectively bad, and over the long run they might even pay off. But when the user upgrades and suddenly can't see how to make it Frobnicate, they get angry.