In reply to captain paranoia:
> I'd better bow out, because more experienced voices seem to be suggesting MacOS is closer in concept to iOS than I thought...
It really isn't. It has inherited some gestures and high-level UI* behaviours from iOS but you get used to those (and can turn a lot of them off if you don't like them). I was asked to fix something on the MiL's Windows 8 machine the other day and found it exasperating use, and I use Windows 7 every day at work. It really comes down to what you're used to.
As someone else said higher up, Finder does pretty much the same job as Windows Explorer. I actually find it easier to use because, for example, it tracks the mouse pointer and scrolls the pane you are hovering over, whereas Explorer requires you to click in the pane first which I find is a...pain (see what I did there?) However, I can well imagine that having "All My Files" turned on could be confusing. Nonetheless, it is the work of but seconds to turn it off, and once off its stays off.
If Photos uses SQLite then you ain't gonna be able to fix that with the standard file browser, no sirree, whether on a Mac or Windows.
I don't use iPhoto or Photos because I prefer to manage my .jpgs through Finder - I'm not keen on applications which put files in places where I have to go ferreting for them, and I prefer to keep full control over what happens to the images. MacOS doesn't stop me from doing that.
This will probably be heresy to some people, but I do use iTunes to manage MP3s. I know where it keeps the files if I need to get at them directly, but most of the time the iTunes UI is the easiest way for me keep them sorted, filed and indexed, to keep podcasts updated etc. Works for me. Might not work for other people. As I say, a lot of it is down to what you're used to.
* Whoever said the Macs don't have a GUI must have a pretty unique idea of what a GUI is. I'm sitting in front a Mac right now with nine windows open, including the native browser and two Excel spreadsheets. There are 28 icons on the desktop including one for each of the HDDs attached to this machine. That don't look like no CLI to me.