There are in fact two separate things going on here, the floppy disk is an icon representing exactly that: a floppy disk. But it is also a symbol for "save". It does not matter what the image is as long as we agree on it, because the symbol is going to be distinct from what it refers to anyway. Just like words in a language are symbols, distinct from what they mean: the word "tree" doesn't look or sound anything like an actual tree, but we have no more problem with that than with a floppy disk.
Bet you didn't know even the Gnome's usability experts called Gnome3 a stinking pile of pooh - did ya. And they are right.
I can't immediately find any reference to their usability experts dissing Gnome 3, but maybe they did. In any case, I didn't start using it until 3.2 (because I wanted to avoid any initial crappiness), I read up on the problems, and I immediately put in a whole bunch of extensions to bend the shell -or most of it- to my will (that's why they're there).
So maybe I have an atypical experience of Gnome 3, but it works very well for me. I won't say better than Gnome 2, but there are parts that work much better, and just for those I'm more than willing to put up with the remaining bugs and speed bumps. God knows I hit far too fucking many of those in Gnome 2, with seemingly no hope of ever getting fixed or redesigned.
Why is it so hard for people to understand that loss of coherent multitasking means a loss of productivity. Which in turn means a loss of usability.
That sounds like something that would hinder productivity. Except I'm not sure what sort of multitasking you would call "incoherent", but maybe that's also something I haven't run into.
As for accusations of not being a "power user", that troll goes into the circular file. I'm not entering an e-peen contest for desktop environments, good grief!
who are more than happy to live with a dramatically superior user experience
FTFY. Unless you were talking about yourself, in which case you'd say it is inferior. But you're clearly talking about other users, who obviously find it superior for their uses. I won't say it isn't inferior to you, but you seem to be claiming that your particular preferences are superior regardless of the use case?
Life is a healthy respect for mother nature laced with greed.