In my opinion, a lot of this stems from the UI/UX focused improvements they made with Blender 2.80. Before that, Blender had some weird UX patterns (like right-click to select) that were different enough from other packages that it was hard to get into. It was always frustrating that it on its surface it looked like the other 3D packages, but it didn't ever work the way I wanted it to. Also, they coupled those UI/UX updates with a large focus on polishing their realtime viewport renderer. With better UX patterns, and a fancy new viewport, it made demos and onboarding much more intriguing.

That's the same way I had always felt about GIMP or Audacity - the windowing system, icons, layout, and other tools never quite felt natural or intuitive and it never made me want to get into it more.