Talking about MC12, which as Alex points out DID start out slowly, and yet ended up having a mind-blowing array of new features.
I remember the day MC 12.0.029 came out, which was the first Alpha released to testing, IIRC. The program was fairly stable, but the only new thing about it was the skin, "Noire", which we all liked but more or less had us scratching our heads. Better still, JimH was warning us that MC12 "may not have that many new features in it"--the implication being we better appreciate the new skin.
Well, as time permitted the J River crewcuts started ladling in some really wild new stuff, and 12 soon became the high bar against which we're now judging 13, just like we judged 12 against 11. At this point I can't imagine going back to 12, 13 is so cool. Tagging, cover art, links, speed speed speed, etc. And best yet, 13 is not much further along than 12 was when it only had a new skin.
Still and all, I won't soon forget the sight of JimH trying to construct a 30-point feature list for MC 12.0.29 out of the words "has a new skin".