Dangit, you sucked me in.
Now I’m all mad.
Not sure if I should register on cgsociety and repost this, but I’ve got a few thoughts on the matter.
I see the greater issue being how people learn. It appears that a great many devotees of the commercial apps learn the programs themselves, and don’t focus on the underlying concepts that are universal to all 3d apps.
I can’t come up with a logical reason for NOT learning more than one way of doing something. If you were a carpenter, and took the attitude of, “I can only drive nails with a claw hammer, those wacky ball-peen hammers aren’t my style” you’ll probably have trouble finding work.
From my own experience: I leaned Maya 4 in college, and became quite proficient in it. I also did a bit in Max, and briefly screwed around with lightwave and xsi. After college, I wanted to continue with 3d at least as a hobby, and was switching to linux. Seeing blender, I could approach learning it with a shopping list kind of mentality, because I had not only learned Maya, but also the core concepts. I knew that, for organic modeling for example, that I just needed to learn how to manipulate vertices/edges/faces, extrude, cut, subdivide, weld, and some form of mesh smoothing/SDS, I’d be set. I just had to learn those individual things, and I was off and running.
The max/maya users calling for identical interfaces in blender, need to grow a pair and deepen their own knowledge by learning to do what they’ve always been doing in a different way. Type a letter with abiword. Edit a photo with something other than photoshop. Try driving a stick shift. You’ll come out stronger in the end. Just think, if you could perform dental surgery with a butterknife, you’d be outstanding with the right tools. 
At least a good laugh came out of this.
Blender is open source, and everyone is free to implement a GUI he/she likes. Instead of writing messages what others should do, use the time to learn how to do things the way one thinks themselves. There is nothing wrong having some more teams developing the program to different direction than the mainstream. Just support them on doing so, not using the time to counter-argumenting! Good documentation is the key to broaden the knowledge and interest.
I would suggest that guy stay on 3ds max since he cant adopt himself in Blender.And it certainly takes some time fro anyone to adopt himself to a new interface of any software.
I have no idea why people have an issue with the UI. Ive never had any problems with it or the way its set out.
Uve just got to take some time to learn ur way around, as it is with any other program. If ur lazy or negative towards it then of course your not going to like it or be able to use it properly.
Hopefully 2.5 will make everything nice and shiny, and shut up all the critics.
And why do we have threads about this all the time? Frustrating.
Nailed it right on the head. I was in the same boat. Take the time out to learn the way it works. Its really not that different.
I was skeptical too, then I bought Essential Blender. Price $35. 3DMAX $3,000. Program that is free and continually being devoloped, priceless. You do the math.
LAZINESS is all that rant is about.