With 12 weeks? Definitely scripting. It's something I've dabbled in lightly but I simply don't have time to learn it in depth. The amount of utility it offers is huge.
So it does. Looks like an oversight in the script that handles that, but I'm not sure the best way to fix it. In the meantime, Mesh>Smooth should still work for you.
Check the maya commands documentation. There's commands for selecting by uv shell and you can assign vertex colour very easily. It should be a relatively simple script.
From what i've read here and there, the biggest new feature seems to be a circularize script. Max, Blender and Modo are no longer valid competitors with such a huge innovation :)