Some good points
You are not using Vista or 7 then? Microsoft removed the "up" button from Explorer. They only brought it back in 8 because people complained (but took away the start menu instead).
Do you like the popup security menu that appears each time you right-click on a file on a network share in Explorer? I don't. An extra click because Microsoft can't handle their security properly.
Dragging and dropping is something I do on both operating systems. I use cut sometimes on Windows, but on Mac that is the default, unless you are dragging a file from one drive or network share to another. Meh just delete the file from the original directory after it has copied.
I will probably still continue to use third party file managers - I kinda like the two pane interface.
I use Windows 7 primarily, and Elementary OS Linux. My dad has Windows 8 and I'm not very fond of it at all, to be honest. It's too touch-screen oriented for a desktop user, although it's great on something like the Surface Pro 3. The lack of a Start button was surprising as it really is a pretty useful implementation. I'm so lost doing things in Windows 8 now!
The security prompts are kind of annoying, and you can disable them, but it's something I can live with if it means better security. I'd rather live with that than the totally wacky (and non-defeatable) mouse scroll-wheel acceleration... I either scroll 2 pixels or 2 pages... it's hard to be precise with that.
As for copy-paste files (in lieu of cut), the only issue is that it writes it on the drive again leading to fragmentation. I know the OSX is supposed to be resistant to that, and it's irrelevant on an SSD, but it takes more time and could slow things down (especially on the 5400 RPM drives that are now standard on iMacs).
I can be a pretty particular person, so I find issues with things pretty easily. All the OS's that I've experienced have usability issues here and there... it's a matter of what you can solve, and what you can live with.
I'm hoping Yosemite addresses some of the quirks that I dislike, but I'm not getting my hopes up as I've seen no evidence of it.