Is there a way to remove the totally pointless index headings in the list view?

Totally agree. I can longer see my favourites on one screen. There really is no point in wasting space by indexing letters of the alphabet.

1PW 8 is very pretty with its huge variety of colours but I think most users will value functionality over prettiness. If the product must now look pretty then the use of colour should be applied intelligently and each colour should have meaning ie one colour to be relevant only to items of one class/category. The brief for the new UI seems to have been to randomly splash as many colours everywhere without rhyme nor reason resulting in an ugly and garish kaleidoscope.