Linear workflow for rendering still wrong in maya, its amazing how in 3dmax it takes 3 simple steps, unlike maya where you have to do a bunch of stuff like creating gamma nodes for each texture, in maya 2011 they implemented color management but still it does not work as it should, color swatches still get messed up, autodesk should come with a real fix for this process, something simple to work with as it is in 3dsmax

mental ray is there for maya, it is just badly organized in my opinion, lots of the workflows are much easier in other packages, take just a fraction of the time you require in maya to do the same.

working with real world units is still a pain in maya, if you want to do things real scale something like a big architectural scene maya got issues with the clipping planes, even if you make them larger on the camera still the manipulators get messed up, it becomes really uncomfortable to work with, and a adaptive grid option would be nice as well, if you get too far from the grid it will turn all gray and useless

this working units issue affects rendering as well, you have to be able to work in real world units in order to get proper falloff distances from the lights

i really hope maya 2013 comes with fixes for this issues, maya its getting behind its competitors which have simple solutions for this