Impressive road map full of game changing features like the third-party app signing service that was sorely needed, the smartphone apps and the ability for posters to moderate the comment section of their own posts. Looks like Steemit is going to negociate successfully that tricky bend after all. I'm going to have to put back some more Steem in my daily regimen going forward.
Meanwhile Synereo shot themselves in the foot and is pretty much dead. Reddit has lost a large number of their more enlightened users due to their reckless censorship of #pizzagate and other sensitive subjects. Twitter and Facebook have shown their true colors by supporting the #fakenews propaganda. There is a huge need for a censorship resistant and brutally ethical social network owned and controlled by its users. The market is ready for that now, and is there for Steem to seize.
That being said, there is still one major thing missing to the roadmap: a rework of the content lifecycle. Currently, content becomes almost impossible to find from the frontpage past 24h and comments are disabled after a month. This prevents Steemit from acting as a drop in replacement to Reddit and acquiring all the disgruntled users sickened by Reddit's censorship.
I think changing the content lifecycle and offering another separate UI view (possibly under another domain name) that would look more like Reddit or Voat who do a great deal to encourage users to do the transition.
This was already addressed in the HF17 proposal. At least the start of it; as you say UI work is also needed.