The home page does too much. Did they put back the "beta" in the logo? If so, that's a great move. It sounds like some of the complaints are about branding -- people think the image of Steemit sucks. Slapping "beta" on the logo signals to everybody this is still a work in progress.
It also I think mitigates some of your concerns because people will let problems slide if they think a project isn't finished. It also discourages people from investing their time and effort, but I don't think that's a bad thing right now. The platform has no official mobile app and it's still working out a lot of kinks. I'd rather it go slow -- too slow, you'd say -- and risk annoying people, than go too fast and get popular before it can handle the attention (and criticism).