They are focusing on exactly what you are saying, putting together a UI that non-technicals can use.
> They might, however, buy a pre-built, pre-installed appliance that just needs to be plugged in and have a web browser pointed at it to get started.
Don't forget about setting up the freaking wi-fi network. Apple, Google make it reasonably seamless to setup their devices from an app, say. Most third-party devices aren't as easy to setup. I have to manually enter my wi-fi password in my Tivo, eg.
This doesn't have to be the case, though. There's nothing stopping FreedomBox from selling a pre-made hardware solution that just has the software loaded on it that anyone can load onto a vanilla server of their choosing. (And it seems they actually do this, though it's not obvious from their website.)
Still a lot of work, but not as much as creating your own distro from scratch.
Seriously though, software isn't the issue here, hardware is. Anybody with the skills can slap Linux on an old computer and turn it into a server. It's packaging it up into something you can sell to the non-technical that's the real win.
I wish free software advocates would take more lessons from Jobs instead of blindly idealizing Woz.