It sucked because we didn't have the possibility of distributed version control, even if we really wanted it.
Some people and some projects prefer centralized. That's fine. But you can't build a distributed version control system out of a centralized one.
svk? Also BitKeeper was built on SCCS, and ClearCase MultiSite was built on ClearCase.
The issue with SVN is simply the work flow it forces you into. I can't tell you how many times I've looked at someone's repo and see .bak files everywhere. I know right away why they're doing this because I did it myself when I used CVS/SVN.
DVCS's let you branch off, experiment, and if it works out you can push everything into the main tree with the history included.
I'm very happy that Subversion works for you. For me, it just blew up on an update, which corrupted the fragile .svn directories it litters all over the working copy. "svn cleanup" couldn't repair the damage. This sort of thing happens on a regular basis.
Git, on the other hand? No problems.
Maybe git is better... maybe it doesn't matter enough to bother changing. But you have to admit these types of things are more about what is "in fashion" than what is better suited to a particular task.
Things go in big cycles. For a few years centralization is excellent, offers massive benefits, then suddenly distributed is excellent offers massive benefits etc etc As the post hinted, I wouldn't be surprised if 5 years from now git is pronounced as a terrible idea, and the trend setters go back to something more like svn.