I definetively agree that MAYA's interface is much better than MAX's (which is why discreet has been copying it).
MAYA's renderer is actually not bad, just a bit slower, but it produces bettter results (refraction, glow, etc).
I still have to get used to MAYA's snaps.... not being able to directly snap vertex to vertex sometime drives me nuts.

I have also noticed that MAYA does not have anything in comparison to MAX's modifiers (bend, taper, twist, spheriphy, etc) That appears to me as somewhat of a drawback.

Also, I find MAX's modifier stack quite efficient, better than MAYA's channel box which apparently does not allow to turn on/off modifiers on the stack... for that I need to go into the hypergraph, which just scares the crap out of me.

finally, the other thing that also scares me is MAYA's materials... They are obviously much more flexible than MAX's but also quite intimidating.

A couple of questions now:
Is it possible to turn a vertex from linear to cubic after it is drawn?
How do I add vertices in the middle of a preexisting line?