Completely share that… but that may happen with either brand?
Routerboards are fully programmable, same “programming” is interchangeable (hardware interfaces allowing) between any of them.
So if you e.g. write custom scripts used internally, or assemble custom provisioning, as long as there’s a LoRA interface in the routerboard, it doesn’t matter which exact “board” you use, you’re not tied to specific model of hardware.
If we focus on wAP physical “form factor” of course I cannot know, but looking at the amount of products based on it I don’t think is gonna be phased out any time soon, maybe new hardware added, but hardware form factor will possibly remain.
Again, I agree, Mikrotik curve is rather steep at the beggining, and UI feels awkward, I thought exactly the same. But once I got trained, I understood why network engineers love WinBox and why Mikrotik designed it this way, it’s great for network admins.
Mikrotik Philosophy though is to “give the cane” providing ROS, and assorted tools (dude, netinstall, flashfig, etc) and let proffessionals to build their whole system, rather than provide a “canned” one.
With the dude + tunnel concentrator where gateways connect, you can build a dashboard to have everything easily and centrally managed… But yes you need to build it.
Anything I can be of help with the LR8 just let me know… will do my best to “streamline” and pave the way to make it less steep at the beggining.