English is the closest thing India has to a common language.

no we're not; we could be but we have borders, and when those borders are broken by pressure of desperate people trying to go to somewhere where plants still grow, we'll have wars...

what's that, the old Grab my tail!? ;-)

There is no preference, not even hidden. And it's the one thing I would change. I too also have left the launcher on auto-hide, and have the dock on auto-hide on the mac too.

Also a longtime mac fan (though admittedly not as longtime as i've had this little-used slashdot id ;-)).

I actually like unity for a lot of its mac-like touches, especially the global menubar, but I agree with this post about the point that they aped OSX in a cargo-cult way. And the autohiding application menu is a big case in point. And no, there is no way to fix that in settings, even hidden ones. It demonstrates painfully the difference between copying a successful user interface but "making it your own" and actually putting in the fundamental usability research, as Apple, to their credit, have done. The menubar behaviour is so clearly a case of making it different for the sake of making it different, and making it worse in the process.

One nice trick of Unity though, that is actually an improvement on OSX, is when you have two (or presumably more) monitors: The menubar (top panel with indicators) appears on both screens, and the menu appears on the menubar on the same screen as its associated window. With OSX the menubar is on the primary screen only and wherever the window is, that's where you have to go to get to the menu.

But I don't like the increasing trend to take user options away that seems to be infecting both Gnome3 and Unity. Unity as seen on Natty isn't *so* bad, but see it in the alpha of Oneiric, or see Gnome3, and there are almost no options to affect the user interface. You can change the background and the screensaver and that's about it. Oh no wait, screensaver settings have gone from system settings too. It's making even OSX seem like a haven of user-customisability. (eg: You can move the dock to the edge you prefer, you can have the primary monitor be on the right...)

And as the complaints both here and other places show, it's not like they're getting it so right that people won't *want* to change usability settings. So it comes across as unearned arrogance, and it's going to cost them users. Not me, *yet*, but I don't like the trend.

Aw damn I had it told to me that the origin of "Apple" and specifically its logo was a coded reference/tribute to Alan Turing and his chosen method of suicide... Especially seeing as originally it was in rainbow colours...