I tried using the spacial feature of Nautilus, a file manager for Linux. What's your usage of a spatial file manager? I couldn't see it being beneficial to my file browsing in any way. Just curious.
Similarities between the new dock and the dock in pre-Leopard is an exception, I think. There is much more not in common design-wise than there is in common.
There was a "defaults" option for a flat dock in 10.7 and 10.8... one wonders why they removed it for 10.9, only to change the default back to flat in 10.10.
I like the faux 3d dock . . . it'd be nice if this was configurable.