I know you only had a few minutes with the build but did either of you get any idea of maximum size of cities compared to SC4? I've been hearing and seeing from the screenshots that the scale doesn't look nearly as big. That might be a bigger turn off for me than the always-online...\
Otherwise, I love the new graphics style. Seems to capture the SC charm as always.
My last SimCity game was 2000, but I got the feeling that cities will look somewhat smaller.
That said the level of simulation seems to be a lot higher, with much more things to consider and more customization options. For instance in the tutorial I played you had to had a garage to the dump because there weren't enough dump trucks to take care of all the trash.
PS: The tilt shift wasn't too noticeable in the build they had on display there. At least I don't remember it being very distracting.