Right or wrong, this does seem more inline with "the Gnome way."
It's also why I stopped using Gnome (and in fact, Ubuntu all together). But I suspect I was never their target user, and that's OK. If they can make it easier for more typical computer users, good for them, and they should stick to what works.
Sadly it feels like the "target user" of Gnome (and thus Freedesktop related projects) are dyed in the wool Mac users, but the Gnome people will not admit this even as they drive away more and more existing Linux users.
They are clearly not targeting Mac users, as Gnome/GTK programs continue to insist on the Windows shortcut model of overloading Control. KDE/Qt programs are at least configurable, with effort, to the Mac (and historical Unix) model of a Meta key for GUI shortcuts and Control for control characters.
