Frankly, I'm glad to see MS stepping up to the plate and working towards a better browser. If you don't like IE9, don't use it, but more competition is never a bad thing.
Forget the rendering differences (for which you can argue there are legacy issues that MS should care about) the pure speed of JS in the various IE's REALLY hurts the internet. Even a moderately complex Google maps mash up requires serious thought on IE as it's just SO slow.
Late in the game compared to what? The browser wars are really heating up again! Plus, it's not like the internet is going anywhere sometime soon, so it seems kind of odd to call it "late" in the game.
DirectWrite rendering is better than the next best Windows rendering, which has so far been the best rendering across OSes -- yes, this is a personal opinion, and no, I'm not interested in debating the relative merits of Windows and OS X rendering. Unless Firefox gets its DirectWrite backend first, IE9 will have the best rendering available on any desktop platform.
As the parent comment said, the future is even better: DirectWrite.
Make your business model in such a way you don't need users who don't know better than not to use IE.
