Group: The GIMP

I have just found a 19 months old post where I told that Gimp 2.8 would not be released "before the first quarter of 2011".
My prediction was just too optimistic, as it was released more than one year later.
What do you think of the new features?
To me there is nothing interesting at all and many bugs and drawbacks were introduced.
1. The new one-window interface was (supposedly) demanded by many users (not me). The time needed to achieve this only change was incredibly long (at least four years). One drawback remains: when you want to close the whole Gimp and its contents, you can no longer click the X on the left toolbox.
2. The new "cage tool" seems to be of no use.
3. A new "feature" was introduced by a developer who claims to be a man-machine interaction specialist ("leading interaction architect"): when you "save" (or save as...) your file this can only be done in .xcf. If you type another extension, you are prompted that you have to use the "export" function. And if you are using the export function you cannot save as xcf. You are also prompted to use the "save" function. and the default format of the "export" function is png. Why?
Here is the portrait of Peter "gimpguru" Sikking, author of this genial modification that nobody had asked for. To use as a target for darts game:

4. Innumerable bugs:
EXIF are not correctly saved in some cases
Default JPEG compression preferences are no longer saved so you have to adjust them every time you save in jpeg.
Tools preferences are defaulted to irrelevant values. For instance, the opacity of brushes is reset to a very low value every time you restart Gimp and you wonder why your brush does not paint anything (even with clone and heal brush).
Maybe I'm too pessimistic (but I was too optimistic when I predicted the release of 2.8 15 months too early). But I think the Gimp project is sinking like the Titanic because of too few programmers and bad ones. What do you think of it?
To me the best place to download Gimp for Windows is now Partha's place:
www.partha.com
He makes special Windows builds and also provides packages of the best plugins. And he takes into account your comments.