I have a related, but different bug with my SoundSticks! Instead of them being deselected for Output on restart, they stay selected, but stop working! Very odd... After anywhere from a few hours to a day or more, I can no longer hear anything through them. Odder still, iTunes won't even play a track; the little speaker icon will appear next to a track I attempt to play, but the progress bar doesn't move off of 0:00! I've found that the only thing that solves the problem is if I uplug/replug their USB cable from the back of the monitor where it's plugged in, and they will resume working.
Richard, your other "little bug" is not a bug at all, but simply a more and more common way for Apple to provide more elaborate functionality. Try option-clicking on all the menubar icons at the right end; many of them will give very detailed info. And usually, a right-click on something like that doesn't do anything different than a normal (left) click. Unfortunately, there no longer are any consistent "rules" for what types of modifier-key-clicks will lead to specific kinds of behavior. I'm not really sure there ever were, either...
Let's hope someone chimes in with some other ideas, or that Apple figures it out in the next release!
Good luck!
John
P.S. As will all things like this, don't hesitate to post feedback here:
http://apple.com/feedback/