>He hired real designers

This is indeed pretty obvious when you look at Unity era ubuntu screenshots. The typeface and text rendering is unmatched to this day. And to this day nobody pulled off purple-orange like they did.

But I always had the feeling that even at their peak, they were spread too thin to go through with their vision. The DE looks stunning but the rest of the system apps carry too much gnome-isms that would've gone through extra 1-2-3 design passes if they had the means.

Now I use KDE, it's extremely functional, and broadly looks like how I'd design a desktop. But when I select ubuntu as the typeface, a part of me longs for that purple-orange.