Is IBA a serious creation tool or just a necessary evil/iBooks gatekeeper?

Over the last few decades, I've taught myself QuarkXpress, Photoshop, InDesign, and many other programs, so I understand learning curves. But I'm not sure I've ever been quite as frustrated as with IBA. Perhaps this is a result of its being "Apple-intuitive" (in other words, it will make no sense until you think the way we want you to think). Perhaps it results from having no competition. Or perhaps my experience in creating print and epub with professional tools is getting in the way.

Or perhaps I should simply start from scratch, despite having many hours into my first IBA project.

I'm curious how others approach this thing with an existing book that you want to put in IBA form:

1. Are you able to use IBA on its own (in other words, if I master IBA's Apple-intuitiveness, does IBA promise a productive workflow, or just more quirkiness?)*
2. Do you import IDML files (I didn't get very far with this; guaranteed to crash InDesign)?
3. Do you create an epub, import it, and tweak in IBA? (my best result so far)
4. Or do you just send the project to someone in India and let them figure it out?

I don't mean this to come off completely as a rant, but at this point I'm really questioning whether I'll ever be able to develop a productive workflow with IBA. It really seems like a necessary evil/last step to the iBooks store with a fixed layout epub.

* I really appreciate answers to my questions elsewhere, but basically none of my issues have been solved. I can't replicate the "fixes" people give me.