Seems like a solid improvement. Though if I had a Wii U, I can't imagine being TOO terribly bothered by the Before loading time. I guess I'm just used to sluggish UI from my Nintendo and Sony systems.
@nate38 To be fair, the worst offender is Miiverse. That amount of loading in Miiverse keeps me from checking it out regularly. I'm hoping this update improves that as well.
I find it surprising Miiverse has been slow to get in/out of because it's browser based, and the actual browser is almost instant to use whatever you're doing.
I imagine a lot of the slowness, generally, was down to Nintendo being overly cautious about stability at launch and now they have a few months experience of it being used they can take off the cotton wool and optimize things as you'd expect.
(Having said that, the existing load times have rarely bothered me at all. At least the goddamn shop doesn't insist on updating itself for 10 minutes every time I want to use it. I'm looking at you, PSN.)
I am surprised at people still saying it's slow... better, but slow. REALLY!? What, do you want the Wii U to anticipate you quitting a game before you press it?
I think people are just used to getting in and out of games/apps as quickly as they can on say, an iPhone or something. Anything slower than that is, by definition, slow.
Reading all the responses in my SwapNote poll thread pretty much confirmed that.