You and I have different points of view on much of this...
1) I almost never shutdown, and a restart is often to clear some issue that I might be having. Bringing back the same set of windows, as well as apps open at the same point is a big timesaver for me.
So, then there's the new Mac concept in Lion: close your open docs before quitting apps. That will take care of old docs suddenly appearing when you no longer need them. Option-Command-W closes all open windows at the same time in your app.
2) The Arrange By: None is already the default for the Finder (unless you change it at some point) - but I do agree with you about the usefulness (or lack of usefulness) of the simpler listing windows using one of the other choices for Arrange By... Those are also not one that I would choose, other than by accident...
3) I don't see the dull grey cloth background, except on the login window, and that maybe once or twice a month. I have my system set to automatically log in, so that login screen is bypassed through a restart.
And, the relative artistic value of the UI? I don't really consider that too much - as I want the OS X system to do what I choose, relatively unobtrusively, and allow me to be artistic, if I choose to be artistic, with the apps that I use. If the system stays out of my way, so I don't often need to think about how I am using the system, then all the better. And THAT, my friend, is where Lion falls down somewhat. Lots of "interesting" animations/swooshes/melts, etc, are fun the first few times, but now are somewhat annoying. Some of those can be turned off through one of the third-party mod utilities.
None of this comes close to anything major for me, and I find that some of my initial issues disappeared after using Lion for a few days - because I no longer noticed. Maybe that's a good thing!
One area is the scroll bars. I missed them at first, but then realized (going back to an older Mac) that scroll bars take up a lot of valuable window space. The disappearing scroll bars are great!
(although you didn't ask for it) just a comment about the bug report (if that's the exact text that you sent): I expect that Apple would appreciate an actual list of the 'items in the UI that you don't like that hit you fairly frequently', more than just your "I haven't made a list of them," where Apple has to guess what you don't like. Make your points as detailed as you can.
Finally, IMHO, after a couple of major updates to Lion, the likelihood of perhaps major mods to the UI would be pretty slim.
