Normally I'm not a fan of the over-fetishization of Apple UI and design that tends to happen here on HN, but in this case I have to strongly agree with you that

Normally I'm not a fan of the over-fetishization of Apple UI and design that tends to happen here on HN, but in this case I have to strongly agree with you that the OSX finder UI (for all it's many quirks and limitations) is vastly better than this new Explorer UI. Hell, the Windows 7 Explorer UI is better. This new Explorer UI is just waaaay to damned cluttered. Putting the Ribbon UI on Explorer is not necessarily a bad thing, but I really thing they could trim down the number of buttons present by default on the "Home" tab of that ribbon. IMHO, this is gonna be intimidating as hell to most casual/non-savvy users.