I think one huge problem also is people have no idea what a full node means. I saw 2 threads, this past week that both asked "What is a full node" and "How do I start running a full node" and they both were running full nodes. Also I think we need to start telling people to start with the bitcoin-qt and bitcoind then move into web wallets. Then just starting off with web wallets or light clients.
There are enormous speedups happening right now which might stem some of the alarming movement to centralized clients... but to really close the gap the software will need to be able to be instantly usable and sync in the background, and thats going to take more work.
We're development resource constrained all around and especially testing constrained. Getting more of the geekier parts of the community running nodes with the bleeding edge code (including testnet and secondary nodes; to keep their real funds off the experimental software) and teaching them how to beat it up and produce good bug reports would help the software mature faster and help get the improvements into the hands of new users.