From my point of view, in the 2000s and even in the 2010s, most solutions on the market were similarly difficult to manage. But cloud controllers and provisioning have changed the ecosystem. Manufacturers who adapted to this trend were able to capture the SOHO market.
Although Mikrotik is technically not far behind in the SOHO market, in my opinion, their user experience is about two decades behind. Today, anyone can set up a perfectly working mesh Wi-Fi at home with just a few clicks and then easily monitor it with nice dashboards and so on.
With Mikrotik devices, this simple setup is not really possible. In some cases, it’s not possible at all, because except for the Audience AP, Mikrotik does not have mesh-capable access points. And the Audience AP itself is only easy to set up with the wireless driver.
Instead of developing Winbox 4, Mikrotik should have created a self-hosted cloud controller. Why rebuild a working software like Winbox 3.x from scratch with fewer features and worse usability? What is the purpose of all that effort?
A cloud controller would be platform-independent since it runs in a web browser, and at the same time, it would offer a modern and simple way to centrally manage Mikrotik devices. Winbox simply does not offer this.