No this was all Red Hat. IBM would never let consultants use something convenient like GitHub, they would be forced to use some crappy internal webapp powered by watson.
I've never had a problem with loudness, in fact I only use them around 50% volume even walking outside next to a busy road. But I agree the audio quality is about the same as a phone speaker.
What benefits exactly? Touch screens were not well regarded pre-iPhone, I remember a lot of people not wanting to ditch their keypads. And there was no app store at first so it was just a phone with music which many could already do.