I fully agree - if you don't follow the handling paradigm but want to try something more sophisticated than Nikon wants you to, you end up in a mess of half-baked semi-solutions. That's why I take my V1 as it is: aperture priority, AF (single point single shot, with recompose), NL (neutral) profile for good to bearable light, MC (monochrome) for low light or atmospheric stuff. It's a very handy camera set up this way, and the results are remarkable.
What I find very irritating is the fact that even when using spot metering (my default setup with every camera except on DSLRs), live view still shows evaluative metering results (Matrix in Nikon speak). WT* ... And neither way of metering is reliable for backlit subjects without exposure compensation, either, whereas I manage to do a quick helpful spot readout (with AEL) on my mFTs almost every time in order to get a balanced frame. For grab shots or street, Matrix is your friend anyway, so not much of a problem there - but it'd be nice to have useful spot metering, too (not that it doesn't work - it does, it's just not that helpful most of the time).
But other than that, the V1 delivers - speed, accuracy, colour, you name it. The RAW files offer a surprising amount of latitude, but even the OOC JPEGs are very nice.
M.