I don't know that people are getting better at it, rather it seems to be because routers are coming with randomized passwords printed on a sticker on the unit itself. And it's anecdotal but my neighborhood is littered with base Comcast & AT&T SSIDs.

That's certainly what happened in my country - people started getting pre-configured wireless routers with their ISP contract. Nowadays a good third of them even have Fonera enabled, which is nice.

I think the set up has become a bit more consumer friendly and appliance like, which may in part lead to better security. Most of the major vendors are even pretty good about disabling commonly exploited functions of older firmwares; there are fewer and fewer routers that are vulnerable to reaver by default now because the WPS function is either disabled or removed completely. This of course doesn't address lesser known more threatening holes, but still it's a start.

But I do concur - I will miss the ease of the Airport tech (not so much the most recent prices though).