Yep, valid points. I've been complaining too about notifications and feed filtering for a long time, but so far nothing has happened. UI seems to be very low priority for Steemit at this point.
Also language support is something I'd love to see. We need a way to filter out languages that a user doesn't understand.
Yeah, it's pretty stupid to have to scroll through posts in Chinese and Korean, while trying to find something both interesting and in a language I understand.