Just did a safe boot earlier today. Enter Time Machine actually runs much faster. Not too bad. Used to take minutes or just crap out altogether. Now I'm booted regular, and it seems slower. Have to wait for over a minute and wonder if it's doing anything.
I'm still getting the white TM icon in the status menus section from time to time. Would be nice if something like that indicated if you had time machine backups on or not, like it did in Snow Leopard. Or if it meant something. Seems to be random.
Stay tuned. Oh, I haven't gotten the spinning beach ball get stuck since the safe boot. Yes, sometimes it comes up and gets stuck. Yes, it actually stops spinning. Then it will jerk a partial spin a few times, like it's stuttering. fortunately, there's the Force Quit function.
Haven't seen the red tabs Finder bit. But that only happened 2 or 3 times -- probably over a couple of weeks.