Remathilis
Legend
IMO, 4e right now - at the end of its product line - is a far, far better game than it was at release. Some of the things you're mentioning here are big parts of that.
FWlittleIW, new Bards and Barbarians were released in Heroes of the Feywild. The new Bard is a basic-attack character ... kinda. The new Barbarian switches from Defender to Striker mid-combat. I've not seen the former in action (it's just weird), but the latter is really effective and IMO better represents the "beefy pseudo-martial raging" barbarian of 1e & 3e than the PHB2 version did.
-O
I maintain that if Essentials had been released in 2010 as D&D 4e, it'd be hailed far better than it was now. TBH I was shocked Next is as OS as it is, I fully expected it to be an All-Essentialized version of 4e with all the fixes in place.
Sadly, what came out in 2008 was half-baked, and it ruined the taste for enough players (myself included) that no matter how good Essentials was, it was never going to sell them. Hell, there are people I know who won't even look at Next because of what 4e did to "their game".