In case you haven't got a Wii U as yet, IGN gives a decent rundown of the Wii U's OS.

[DaRev]

d21lewis said:

I tried it out.  I even made a horrible youtube video (which I may or may not post) showing it.  The Wii U took almost the exact same amount of time getting from the off position to the actual game when compared to the Xbox 360.  I even took things a bit further--from the title screen to the actual game starting, the Wii U got me online and in a team death match FASTER!

How could this be, you ask?  Well, the Wii U goes from the Wii U intro to log in to choosing a game faster than the Xbox goes from 360 intro to log in to choosing game.  The 360 wastes valuable seconds.  Meanwhile, the Wii U is on a static load screen.  The load screen was where the 360 caught up.  Depending on which  console I press "power" first, the winner comes down to about one second.  I tried it multiple times.

So, the Wii U may not be as slow as we make it out to be (though going from game to the title does take a long time and I suspect many apps like Netflix will be a toss up, as well).  The 360 just hides it better.  I didn't toss the PS3 into the equation since, from my experience, the 360 has always been the faster of the two.

Good observations, which I agree with. I think there might be a valid argument as well to say that programs on the Wii U, like Miiverse, might be more taxing on the CPU and system resources than Live (or whatever PS3 uses).

I could only assume that whatever hardware the next PS and Xbox are build on, would cost an arm and leg to get around their OS. So I think gamers should expect to pay a lot for the privilage of those consoles being able running their beefed-up 2013 OS at a speedy pace.