My UI experience is very limited (Windows and Linux only, I currently use XFCE4). What do you consider to be the best UI(s) currently offered (in an operating system)?
My only gripe is I wish firefox would integrate it better instead with an UI similar to (now defunct?) Eolie web browser.
Also I haven't spend enough time with it recently but I think kde plasma has the flexibility to be probably as good as gnome. I just don't like the default settings and have always been too lazy to dig deep into it. I used to love kde3.
When people way gnome3 do they really mean gnome3 or gnome3..gnome43?
I really like Gnome 42 and improvement that can be seen in 43, but I didn't like gnome3 at all
Ironically the same happened in the kde world a few years before. I had been a very happy user of kde 3.x and kde 4.x happened to be a crashy pos and it only really got better with kde5.
The ability to just type and search through all menu items saved me so much time!
While I think that your take on Apple UI/UX not being good is rather contrarian (given that many quote them as some of the best in the industry), I agree that using Ubuntu with Unity was actually a reasonably pleasant experience, at least in the later years when they had addressed most of the quirks that the earlier versions struggled with.
Then again, I'm the kind of person who is also served perfectly well by something as simple as XFCE or LXQt, so maybe I'm a bit biased and my standards aren't the highest. Yet, I really appreciate a UI that's functional and feels snappy.