For me, the biggest thing was the program not running from a single window. IIRC there was actually a separate fork of GIMP that made it run in a single window called GIMPshop or something, and that made it into a single window. I’m not sure when GIMP itself got single window functionality.
It’s a lot more usable these days.
I think even if they do reverse course or it was a genuine mistake, it’s easy to lose people’s trust forever, ESPECIALLY when it comes to something sensitive like storing ALL of your passwords.