Yes, the Gnome 3 and Windows 8 user interfaces went down this route as well. Going back to Unity, whilst I have only used it in passing, based on that experien

Yes, the Gnome 3 and Windows 8 user interfaces went down this route as well. Going back to Unity, whilst I have only used it in passing, based on that experience I can't think of a feature that I'd miss from a more 'traditional' desktop interface. The only minor things I found jarring were the online search results in desktop search (which I believe has been disabled in 16.04) and a slightly clunky look to the search results (which is just an implementation detail, could be something that is refined in the future). Is there something you'd want from Unity that it doesn't currently offer? FWIW, I think the Windows 8 desktop interface was a mistake. There was too much hidden away. It also didn't feel cohesive to me (the jump from metro to desktop and vice versa was too jarring IMO). Metro works really well as a phone UI though (I'm using it now, I think its greatest strength is probably the speed of navigation through the interface).