To demonstrate exactly how not a big deal it is now, there's a mention in Twenty Things That Were Going To Kill Magic" in 2013:
One day, CAPS, the department in charge of laying out and printing the cards, explained that there were a few changes that needed to be made for printing purposes. R&D saw this as a chance to fix a number of other problems with the card frames and revamp them. As this new frame first appeared in Eighth Edition, they were referred to as the Eighth Edition card frames.
This change had a huge impact on how the cards looked and many players objected to the shift. They felt the new layout had less of a fantasy feel and moved the game away from its roots. This was another very loud outcry with many words written both in articles and on message boards.
That is, they still just think of it as having fixed some problems (or at least Mark Rosewater does).
This is corroborated in Starting Over, where Mark Rosewater discusses what he'd change if they started over (in the form of a time travel conversation with Richard Garfield):
"We also changed the card frames to make the words easier to read. Especially in the name. The original font and layout made reading cards from far away very difficult."
(Looking back up at your example, I have to say I totally agree: whatever you might say about the beauty of the design, the old one is way harder to read, and that's pretty important in Magic!)
In fact, he goes on to mention that if they could have, they might well have made even more changes, mentioning the Future Sight frame as an example of some ideas (thought not the optimal form).
I don't think I've ever seen anyone at Wizards say anything negative about the redesign, and generally, it's not a topic comes up much at all, suggesting they're still pretty happy with the decision.