Microsoft Planner and Project: a look at what’s to come

My understanding is SharePoint Lists is actually old technology that had some problems in the past.  Now that they wrapped an app/special UI around it and gave it some lipstick, is it better than it used to be?  That's the question I still have.  I struggle with Kanban boards in both Lists and Planner.  What a confusing mess...at least for task management use cases!  Lists allows you to use custom fields but Planner is incorporated into the Teams Task app.  Users want both...so it's unclear as to what Microsoft's goal is for each tool.  I think "Offering many tools so that users have many options to be flexible and work where they want and how they want." is becoming quite a cliché in the industry.  Whatever happened to the value of simplicity?