RE: HF20 has incredible potential! The roll out has been less than awesome.
As far as I know there is absolutely no plans to further develop steemit. As we know steemit != steem - A little while ago there was an ample conversation with @lukestokes regarding this very subject. I must confess at first It made me upset, but after the emotional initial reaction subsidized I understood what he was trying to say.
Steemit.com is probably best described as proof of concept, a somewhat successful experiment (because it's not perfect) that has given this blockchain the opportunity to lure in (yes, the right word) a community that would care for it's future.
We are already seeing new front ends that are vastly superior to steemit taking over, and in my personal opinion steempeak is so good, it makes steemit look like a dinosaur, but I'm not sure I'm in the majority.
In the future however, the plan is for communities to branch out, specialize if you will and for the box of unmarked legos that steemit currently is to fade into the background.
To me this makes perfect sense, but I realize there are some emotions invested into the idea of steemit the ultimate blogging platform, and I don't dismiss them. However, we would be silly to believe that everyone wants to be a blogger or that can for that matter, so the specialization into niches is nothing but a natural step.
Would updates come to condenser? Sure, I'm sure some will... but I doubt profoundly that we will be seeing something that will blow anyone's mind front end wise. I think that's nowhere on anyone's roadmap.
I think the same way as you @meno, I'm not that old here and it took me some time to understand and differentiate Steemit from Steem - now I can see it.
For me it sounds natural to see Steemit.com fading away slowly, indeed SteemPeak does a much better job, so good that when I try to bring my friends into the chain I show my blog through there.
It also sounds natural to see the niches finding their own way into separate dApps, from there we already have dTube, Appics, etc.. At least it'll make the experience of finding high-quality content much easier than this chaos that is the tag system.
It's important to know that about steemit.inc and the steemit.com frontend so we don't carry expectations!! I would like to add to your excellent suggestion of steempeak, (which let you decide if there's going to be beneficiaries or not), also eSteem surfer which already is giving the option to edit old posts!!