i also came from maya and blender's gui made sense for me after a few days. a lot more sense than xsi for example. this whole gui thing is a bit subjective. some people seem to have problems with it, some not.
blender is more stable for me than most other 3d applications i have used. my last crash happened a few weeks ago and after i have reported it i could download a fixed svn version a couple of hours later.
... here is a blender timelapse video i just came across:
