IBM has hundreds, if not thousands, of products that they own and maintain. Understand that the research for a design, designing it, and then developing it takes months to years to accomplish. IBM won't be able to update all of their products, but they will work on the ones that they can and then carry design consideration to all new products. Thats all a company can do. Same goes for Microsoft, Google, etc. IBM is a bit late to the game is their only issue.

Also consider, how are they going to get designers/people who care about design if they don't advertise it first. Yes there are products that need work, but to fix that issue they need to say Design 37 and more times just to get the attention of the right people. I am sure in your line of work as well, things don't just happen immediately because you want it to and sometimes to solve one problem you need to solve two or three others first.