>what do Finder complainers consider the gold standard of file browsers that Finder should aspire to be?

When bash is more useful than finder, there's probably an issue.

Case in point: not being able to open a specific path (unless I bookmark it)

Case in point: when I open my home directory in finder, I don't necessarily want the directory tree that was last expanded to still be expanded. For directories with a large item count, this can take a _long time_, even on a retina imac.

Renaming a file is always an exercise in "did I click it in just the right way? Oh, crap, no, don't launch it to edit it."

Windows Explorer has neither of those issues.