Can someone confirm this? If true, this would be a big change.
Yes, you can trade 1 talent for 1ability point and 3ability points for 1 attribute, so there's not that many cases where it's worth not taking talents now since 1 ability point is nothing.
On the bug about unspeced points, I haven't seen that. I had 6 unassigned ability points when I respeced and then still had 6 when I respeced to the same thing. Same for talent points, had 1, stayed at 1. I haven't checked unassigned attributes though.
You do keep your spells though, I did a few respecs to learn more spells. Get to 5 in a school, learn a bunch of spells, respec down to whatever and you keep the spells. AP penalties still apply, but useful to have 6 novice spells at lvl 1 for example.
