The piano to me feels like an iPhone, it does a lot of things well, and it hides many details from you. I don't know if real pianos are tunable/adjustable, but the electronic one we have at home certainly isn't (except in its ability to sounds as different instruments).

I recently bought a Oud[1], a classical stringed middle eastern instrument, it's not fretted, it's portable, and adjustable. To me, when I compare it to the piano, the Oud feels like the Unix of musical instruments. It's a bit hard to get used to at first, but it's designed to be lite-weight (portable) and adjustable, allowing power users to be very creative and expressive. Most other users will stick to a standard tuning and placement of fingers.

I'm not super-bothered by the way the piano is layed out, to me it's just a simplified instrument that works for 95% of the cases.

What I don't understand is why do all the middle eastern scales (maqam[2]) have 7 tones. The fact the western C major scale also has 7 tones is just another example of yet another scale with 7 tones (and it happens to correspond to the Ajam maqam[3]).

There are some middle eastern scales not really playable on a piano, like the Rast[4], unless the piano is somehow adjustable.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oud

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_maqam

[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajam_(maqam)

[4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rast_(maqam)