First, in the Notes field you still can press Ctrl/Cmd and pop up text formatting controls bubble. It’s not ideal, e.g. you still have to shift-enter and then fix formatting to bullet list, but I’m saying it’s still there just in case you missed it.
Second, soon there’s going to be Page columns, i.e. you’d be able to have full page editing capabilities on the Notes field. Maybe even open it up by itself instead of row details.
Third, you can make yourself a button to expand the Notes field in the big cell mode and put that button above the Notes field. That’s still a button to click, but at least not a small one in the bottom. You’d have to OpenWindow() with a URL that’s specific to that column’s modal and substitute row ID with the one of the current row.