Makes sense. Eyes are closer to the top of a screen than the bottom. Side placement of taskbar makes better use of widescreen space.

It's certainly not perfect and I had some complaints with it (I like window-local menus), but they didn't make the decisions just because.

You could always use keyboard shortcuts to access the menu. Unity also let you search through the menu items with the Alt key - no manual navigation necessary.

I thought that integrated menus are a great idea - even Apple does it. It saves vertical space and looks "at one" with the rest of the system.

GNOME has solved in a radical way by simplifying menus, so you need neither search nor frequent mouse/keyboard navigation.

Honestly 'even Apple does it' is a poor argument. If global menu would be a really good and generally accepted idea we'd see it implemented in GNOME and KDE (via extensions at least).

https://vizzzion.org/blog/2016/10/plasmas-road-ahead/ Global Menu being implemented in KDE 5.9.

I don't mind the principles of it -- and I don't mind it in macOS. At least the menu is always there, the problem with unity is that it is hidden and will slowly appear when you hover the mouse on top. It's really hard to aim for what I want when I actually have to access a function on the menu.

I am using KDE on anything I can, and I have no problem with them doing things like the global menu. KDE tends to get things right to my taste.

There is a setting for menu being always on.

That's great, but not all apps will be able to trim down their menu items. Being able to quickly search all the entries, like in macos / Unity, is a huge help for new users.