Buttons - The buttons are now small and harder to push. When you hover over one, all of them show their functions (X, -, +). They do not look right and consistent with the UI.
They show their functions like that in Snow Leopard too? It's a feature I like as I use the graphite appearance for them, and it works well, and smaller and crisper is better IMO, though I can understand that it maybe a pain on high resolution displays, but I use keyboard shortcuts for closing/minimising/maximising windows most of the time anyway.
Finder/iTunes - iTunes 10 was a sneak preview of Lion's new UI. I do not understand why Apple would go from a colorful theme to a black and white one. It is very boring. Also, the shades of grey make it seem like the buttons are sometimes greyed out (inactive), but they actually work. Below, I think it is obvious which looks better.
I actually really hated the updated iTunes look, but it's actually really grown on me. When you compare them, the unified look is much sleeker and less intrusive than the chaos of colour look; it does mean that the icons need to be very clear if the names aren't available, but I like it. An OS shouldn't be colourful and garish, it should be something you hardly see as it becomes a background to what you're doing.
Granted animation doesn't fit this motif, but if it's actually giving a sense of what you're doing, then it's actually an important element.
This is why OS X is becoming more and more sleek and usable, while Windows is playing catch-up, as Microsoft are still at the "make it colourful and flashy like a children's toy" stage, and while it's pretty to look at it, it's horrible to use, as minimalist and functional is what we need from an OS, so the focus can be on what I want to do.
Mission Control - The point of Mission Control is to merge Expose and Spaces. However, I have never met anyone that actually uses spaces.
Can you not just use Exposé as before if you like? And aren't Dashboard, Spaces, and Fullscreen Apps all handled the same way in Mission Control? So it seems like it's not just a case of Spaces + Exposé.
I don't use Spaces either, but with the unified location I may actually be more inclined to. It also seems an even more elegant way to handle things, as it rolls together Spaces, Dashboard, and both full-desktop and application Exposé in a way that ought to be more useful than ever.
