I don't know all the history behind this, but my guess is the original stub axle had been in use satisfactorily for many years. As more and more people started using loaders, and the loaders got larger, more failures started cropping up. I'm not sure how the new part differs from the old, but it could be something as simple as a better forging or heat treating process.
They updated the part and as far as I know only the new part # is available nowadays, so once replaced it should no longer be an issue. I know other manufactures who will keep selling the customers the same old crap over and over again.
One other thing to realize is that what we hear on TBN is not always a good sampling of the general tractoring public. It seems like there are a lot of problems with a certain tractor (any make) on here since this is where people come to discuss it. Most of the time you don't have people posting that their tractor is working fine, just for the sake of doing so (although there have been some.)