I have to reply to Nex's earlier comments: I've found, especially in the case where, for example iTunes is having trouble ripping a CD, even command-option-escape takes a very long time to do anything, and it's very frustrating. I think the original whine was a request for a keystroke that would force the kernel to immediately restore control to the user - though ideally it would have never taken it away in the first place.

As for the USB unmounting issues, the problem with removing a mounted drive comes when the computer is using write-caching on the drive (which means it's writing data to a chunk of memory, then eventually writing that to the actual drive to improve the disk performance) - if you pull the drive before it's flushed that write-cache to the drive, your data is lost. Windows handles this by allowing the user to turn write-caching on and off for individual drives (this is hidden in the policies tab for that piece of hardware), and for USB flash drives it defaults to off, or as Windows puts it: "Optimize for quick removal". In this configuration and I yank the key, nothing bad happens and Windows does not scold me. The point is that this IS an OS issue, not a device issue, and it is easily solvable.

A whine I'd like to add: let me at least use Party Shuffle or make a smart playlist from an iTunes shared library. I know that Apple probably intends for this feature to be used in dorms (that is, sharing music you don't own), but it would be a really convenient way for me to listen to my music on various machines in my own home if only there weren't so many limitations on shared libraries. I promise, I'm not trying to steal my own music!