I think C8 is a clear indication that there’s been a further emphasis on OS X development. That’s not all bad of course. Some of the things benefit both platforms – having to work around OS X’s sub par low latency performance must have been a big driver for ASIO Guard improvements, but it’s great to have for everyone.
An interesting detail is the track list font which was perfectly fine on Windows before, but looked hideous on OS X. That wasn’t Steinberg’s fault, it’s just that most fonts look hideous in low DPI on OS X (see Font Rendering: Respecting The Pixel Grid). The bigger font is one way to improve it on OS X now that retina is still not a thing in Cubase. On Windows it kind of feels like it just takes extra space unnecessarily.
The menu bar certainly feels strange, it does to Windows what running X apps like Gimp feels on OS X. Sure it works. And you’ll get used to it. But it feels really weird to break platform consistency like that!
I’m sure there must be some grumblings about this internally at Steinberg as well, what with the unfortunate side effect of this non-standard implementation being extra work for the developers, playing Whac-a-Mole with bizarre interface bugs like the zero padding and taskbar autohide issues that would never happen with standard windows. Don’t get me wrong, MDI definitely shouldn’t make a comeback. But vanilla window frames would be nice.