Yes, but you dont use a Mac. You dont get what they are going for:

Top bar? Check.
Text on top left? Check.
Same font look and feel? Check.
new similar default wallpaper? Check.
Buttons to the left? Check.

The only thing missing is changin the logo to a pineapple or coconut.

As a Mac friend said, “If Ubuntu had any more penis (OS) envy, theyd be be getting one grafted now.”

I agree with you on the “how do you get criticism heard” instead of having it shunted to a box like is done in the US for demonstrations (and of course make it seem the opposite by calling it ‘free speech zones’) where it wont bother the ‘grownups’, give the illusion of input yet go on with business as usual.
I dont claim that Mandriva or Opensuse are better in this respect but there is that side of Ubuntu which claims (like Google) and aspires to some ideals about community which in reality are nothing more than sophisticated crowd control.
The best example is Jono Bacon who used to be this fire and brimstone guy when talking about distros and very gung ho and in your face about things and now has morphed into his dad and telling kids to stay off the lawn and cant we all just get along.
Any group HAS to have dissenting arguments heard or it risks the chance of seeming detached.

Then again, I dont use Ubuntu (I am writing from a Kubuntued machine this week), I sure as hell dont use Gnome and I think that distro choices is a joke in most cases when using the same desktop since the differences between tehm are minimal and usually cosmetic: fonts, wallpapers, icons, etc. I hate ALL defaults usually and change settings because I like my desktop the way I LIKE it, not how some UI queen tells me I should like it. (spend 20+ years looking at a bottom toolbar, youre gonna tell me its better the other way? WHo cares? Its what I think that matters).
Personally, I hate all panels and have had mine disappear since my WIndows days.

Your real choice is the desktop, everything else is cosmetic stuff and secondary. If you dont like the desktop paradigm, no matter how many icons you change, you wont feel confortable.
That’s why I dont care at all about this meaningless cosmetic change (is there anything more ‘chicklike’ than having press releases when you change a wallpaper? Seriously, do you have to match them with your shoes and nails too?) but more about how it came about and how it was handled.

and the way it is taking up people from novell which promotes mono in gnome. to the point of removing gimp, a perfectly good software, just to squeeze mono (patent trap) in to ubuntu’s default install.

it would be pretty soon that Canonical will go the novell path, and then the community and its developer starts dropping it like a hot piece of iron.

I suppose those developers can go to debian, or help out at lxde.

The good news is that there is a computer system for people like you, it is called Wii.

Every linux distro is poorly designed, this blog is no exception:

http://i.imgur.com/ivDbP.png

Let’s take the next top four distros listed below Ubuntu @ DistroWatch.com:

Fedora?

Shitty huge fonts; icons from mid-nineties; every time the same boring blue wallpaper

Linux Mint?

Huge fucking fonts; icons same as Fedora; wallpaper same as with Fedora, except this time it’s green

Opensuse?

Garbage font rendering; uses KDE4 – supposedly next generation, however in fact it doesn’t differ much from KDE3 = you still get your panel, your desktop icons and same old file manager that shows your files the same way it has been done over over ten years; wallpaper same “ten year old kid who just got to try out photoshop” syndrome as with Fedora

Mandriva?

Does it have good fonts like Windows 7 or Mac OS X? Of course not, this is linux.
Does it overdo the coloring, like someone pissed toothpaste all over the screen? Of course it does.
Does it come with the same generic ultra-bland wallpaper like every other distro? Of coursse it does.