@coldtea already pointed out some tips, but some others to note:

> - There's no (?) way to keep everything consistently sorted and aligned

Press CMD-J to open up the visual option, you can auto group and sort, snap to grid (unsorted), choose a default view.

> - No "parent folder"...

You can either press CMD-UpArrow or just right click on the title bar to see all the folders above it.

> It has less cool features (no tabs for instance) but is so much better to actually use.

Windows Explorer is also missing column view, which is a much faster way to navigate the file system completely with the keyboard. I'm often frustrated in Windows Explorer just trying to move around directories.