Decent improvement. It's good something so big came only from a patch/firmware update. All the kinks will be ironed out by the time I get one in 18-24 months.

That is nowhere near a fair comparison.  The 3DS can do speeds like that, too.  

Seems like a fair enough comparison to me. 

PSV or 3DS, if a handheld can do instant home menu, why can't a home console?

Not really.  #1: Look at the game being closed for the Vita.  Not a demanding game at all.  #2: Miiverse is running in the background of the home menu on the Wii U.  #3: The Wii U simply has a much more taxing OS in general than the Vita.  #4: There's not really much to say that the Vita even closed the software to begin with.  #5: The 3DS/Wii U tends to save data when closing software, if the Vita was indeed closing that software, it obviously didn't save any data.

You haven't used a Vita before have you. Any game or program can be closed like that at any point, just hit the PS button and swipe the panel and it's gone instantly. There's about a quarter second of lag when closing a PSP game though, because of the emulator shutting off I would guess. It really is that fast though.

Regardless, #2, #3, and #5 still stand.  I also made it clear that I was just observing, and it still doesn't seem like the data saves and it just terminates the program if it's closed out.  Not that it makes a big difference as saving the data doesn't take very long, admittedly, but it still counts towards something.  The PS Vita's OS is really quite simple in comparison to the Wii U, so I don't see why it really is being compared.  

Sorry I was editing in another section, I'll put it here instead:

The OS has nothing to do with it either, since the Wii U has a full 1GB devoted to keeping the OS in the background. It's like playing a game on PC and hitting the quit button or the little X in the corner, Windows has no need to load back up. Hit the X in the corner of your browser, how long does it take to close? Instant.

I'll let someone else respond to this because the bolded isn't really true. Especially the underlined.

#1 should have nothing to do with anything. As noted, it doesn't on two far more resource constrained handhelds. 

#2 and #3 may be the issue, but is MiiVerse and a flashy home screen really worth a ten second delay every time you exit software? Perhaps MiiVerse should stay in the home menu and its own app and stay off the home screen itself. 

#4 and #5 3DS suspends software and doesn't close it until you launch new software. Why shouldn't Wii U do this?

Uh oh.

Time for me to back away.