I do truly believe that Ubuntu will be a lot more stable if you stay away from the "interim" releases. When I bring these things up with people, I do get the impression that Canonical looks at the non-LTS releases as more of a sort of public beta test to ensure the eventual LTS is solid. For the sort of stuff I do on my computer, using libraries which are up to 2 years out of date is incredibly painful; even the 6 months between interim releases is a problem sometimes.

So if you use the LTS, and the outdated packages isn't an issue for you, it makes sense that you'd be pretty happy with it. And maybe that's a use-case I'm underestimating.