that they could just mount the engines forward and up a bit, and the only resulting problem was it got a bit light on the stick in a small part of the envelope - so just tweak software to nudge the stab if anyone ever goes there, job done.
Once again, that part of MCAS was not the issue from what we know so far. It was that ONE FAILED AOA vane could cause MCAS to activate. THAT was the issue. A software fix is fine, the fact that it could operate on erroneous data from a single source is not.
If you don't like software "nudging the stab" up or down then I guess you hate Tailstrke Avoidance inputs right? Or Airbus Alpha floor? Or Embraer stall avoidance?