[iainmerrick]

The current piano layout (seven white keys and five black keys) is pretty closely tied to traditional music notation (sharps and flats => black keys), so I'd guess sight-reading with this notation would be harder on current pianos.

In principle you could imagine a more regular piano layout that maps well to this more regular notation. In practice, attempts to do that have generally failed and it's hard to see how to make it work.

The irregular spacing of the current piano layout can be frustrating, but it fits under the fingers pretty well, and it's very useful to be able to identify notes at a glance.