Your concerns are well founded. Here are my thoughts:
1) DevShares will be released soon. The idea is exactly as you stated - to have a test chain for new functionality and rules. The issue with a testnet is that no one uses it. DevShares will have some non zero value which should encourage people to try the new features rather than just developers and die-hard users.
2) There are new wallets being designed. One for an advanced top shelf trading experience and I believe another wallet that is much less complex for the average user. The user experience issues of the current wallet are well known and the dev team is working hard to address this.
3) It certainly could have been communicated better that this is Alpha software. Not even Beta yet, though hopefully soon. While people in software development are used to "zero dot" releases the trading community is not and therefore are caught by surprise when big changes occur.
There are two paths to developing this type of software. The Etherium route where everything is hush hush until it's polished and ready to go or the Bitshare's route which is open and community driven, or at least community sound boarded.
tl;dr
What you say isn't wrong however I think it's more a misunderstanding about the stage Bitshares is at in its development cycle.