My partner spent 11 years as a developer in Silicon Valley for several different companies and had this to say as their thoughts as to why it got changed so drastically:
"It's nearing the end of the first quarter and there's probably a board meeting coming up regarding securing more funding. These board members are not users of the end products, they are usually just investors wanting to see a profit. As long as the they can be convinced that they will get something back from their investments, they'll continue to fund the project. They also want to see major differences between updates and the bigger the differences the better in their minds. They don't notice the smaller, smarter updates that have been done to make the product better, they just want BIGGER and SHINIER.
The developers, however, care a lot about what they're creating and quite often don't have a say. They have to implement changes that come from the top down, even if it's something that isn't actually possible to code, they still have to 'make it work'. They also have insane deadlines to meet for set release dates, which means coding errors can occur or things get left out until after the release date.
More than likely, things will not return to how they were. Some of the key features that creators like may be added back in, but the change is probably permanent. Until the next round of funding..."
Don't know if that helps anyone understand what's going on, but I thought a different view might be interseting to add. Personally, I think the new desktop version isn't very intuitive and, along with the need to change the thumbnails into book cover style art, seems to be a way to weed out a lot of creators by just making it too difficult to have their series seen.
Anyways, lots of love to the devs and the moderators here who are trying their best in this bad situation.
