[gruez]

There was probably massive selection bias going on. That is, the people who volunteer for internal dogfooding programs or external usability tests tend to be the type of people who like the design changes that have been happening across the industry (eg. more whitespace, greyscale icons, adding round corners). Meanwhile, the people who liked their UI as it is and don't want the changes are probably not going to volunteer for beta programs that they know are going to contain changes they don't ilke.