Cleaning up any remnants of early unwanted side effects such as matte lines, white boxes around objects in space and opaque cockpits was never a thing critisized in the special editions. That's what SE fans always seem to put up as a major plus for the SEs. But, imho that's just the sugar that comes with Lucas' 'p.c. medicine' for the fans. It was never about 'giving fans something new and cool' it was about Lucas revoking compromises he had to make 20 years ago, getting back at the people who made him do those, and finally trying to 'convince' the audience by saying "if you want a cleaned up version without matte lines, white boxes and opaque cockpits, you'll have to stick with my new visions of the movies, period.". In my opinion, he should have put up a cleaned up (but otherwise untouched) version of the OT in theatres 1997 and wait with the changes until after the prequels. All we have now, is just another soon to be called 'early roughcut' version, that will become obsolete in 2007.

After all it seems that he isn't very confident in the changes himself, otherwise he wouldn't be so afraid to leave the choice up the customers.
All the negative experiences he seemed to have made during the creation process of the OT, have obviously turned him into a total control freak. It's a sad thing, imho.