I totally see the problem, but on the other hand, I explicitly disabled focus steal protection in CCSM because I occasionally missed some (to me relevant) notifications.
Right. It's not really a binary problem. Perhaps something like the Windows Action Center, or whatever it's called, is really needed at O/S level to make non-stealing work best as the default.
There are certainly plenty of ways it could be improved. Delaying focus stealing if a key has been pressed in the last 500ms or so would be a good start.