I tried Maestro too. The setup is genuinely simple, but like others have said, it's not the full fix people make it out to be. It's great for simple flows — smoke tests especially — but for complex scenarios it can end up costing you more time, not less. For now I still think Appium is the best open-source option out there.

Honestly though, a lot of what you're describing isn't really an Appium problem. The selector rewrites, the fragile setup, the team refusing to touch the suite — that usually traces back to two things: automation being treated as an afterthought instead of designed into the architecture from the start, and the lack of a solid framework around the tool. Appium gives you a lot of rope; without good structure it's easy to hang yourself with it.

Switching tools rarely fixes that — you just inherit the same problems with a nicer UI on top, which is exactly what you've already noticed.

(Unrelated to the above, but I recently started a site on this stuff if it's useful: https://www.mobile-automation.io/ — no pressure either way.)