To me, it seems they are fighting really hard to make Linux a user friendly desktop platform. Even if it leaves behind some ways of working that us older Linux users are accustomed to, I think this is a worthy cause.
And now we're getting the Unity interface before it's really finished. I really think the new interface is something that works on netbooks but is a step backward if you're using a widescreen monitor or regular laptop.
But I'm just a knuckle-dragging throwback who likes minimalism, xmonad, and Vim, who doesn't stream audio over the network and thinks ALSA was perfectly adequate, etc., so what do I know? If I'm the sort who's happier with Arch, then I'm clearly not their target user anyway. YMMV.
Ubuntu is the antithesis of that (no judgement here, I am fairly marvelled at the "pop the CD in and it just works" result of Ubuntu).
