I think the reason it is where it is is because it was created a long time ago when some of the things we expect today weren't the norm (cloud sync, friendly UX). I think it has such a large user base that it would be very difficult to revamp it without disturbing a lot of users (and add-ons). I think people who use Anki are happy with it as-is, so there's momentum there. And new users who don't like it, well, they don't stick around.
I've written my own spaced repetition flashcard app (see my profile), so I've looked a little bit at how the data is stored in Anki and have a general idea of how sync works, and my impression is sync was bolted onto an existing system meant for a single device. I've seen posts from users in the sub-reddit about how if you do lessons on one device and then do lessons on another, there'll be a conflict in the data and you'll have to manually tell Anki to pick one over the other. (This may have been fixed since, of course.)
I've written my own spaced repetition flashcard app (see my profile), so I've looked a little bit at how the data is stored in Anki and have a general idea of how sync works, and my impression is sync was bolted onto an existing system meant for a single device. I've seen posts from users in the sub-reddit about how if you do lessons on one device and then do lessons on another, there'll be a conflict in the data and you'll have to manually tell Anki to pick one over the other. (This may have been fixed since, of course.)