@complains: This is a beta. As I understand it, the whole purpose of this beta-testing is to get complains. So from everything I have read so far, it is not: "This will gonna suck", but "You should (strongly (!!!)) consider this and that, otherwise it gonna suck (for people like me)".
Indeed, people who defend iso are in the same category as people who defend linux: they like the complexity because they know how to navigate it, and the high barrier to entry creates a closer-knit community. This is true of any specialist community: hackers, football players, swimmers, and stamp collectors all form social groups based on the simple fact that "other" people don't understand the things that community likes to do.
The point of the so called complexity is, once you mastered it, the tool becomes more powerfull. Don't want to derail this into a Linux-thread, but console vs. Window system fits quite well into Graphical Interface vs. Text Interface/Text Log.
If you are not used to it, the graphical Interface might be nicer too look at, and seeing all the cards in something like your hand is much more intuitve than having just the names written there, and seeing how the move to the play area also really shows you what's going on. So you have a lower barrier to entry. But afterwards, it is not as effective as the interface with the higher barrier. If you want to play fast or effective, and you start having hands full of cards, that are overlapping, maybe you realise the the console version is much more powerfull, where you have an overview over your complete hand, instead of having to hover with the mouse over your complete hand, and try to guess which card is hidden under other cards, and repeat that every time after you draw more cards this turn.
Similiarly with animations. If you want to play your Alchemist stack, maybe you prefer (after the first few times at least), just to hammer on the 6 fields, instead of watching an animation for 6 times every turn for the rest of the game.