> There are literally millions of smart hackers out there
    > and only 1 entity has ever managed to put a state-of-the-art
    > UI on top of a Unix core: Apple.

I wouldn't say ever. At some point in time, IRIX and Solaris (at least!) both had state-of-the-art GUIs on top of Unix. Apple's state-of-the-art GUI-on-Unix was inherited from NeXTSTEP.