I get where you're coming from, but I'm curious how you can evaluate a desktop environment from release notes. To me, GNOME 3 is a clear demonstration of the difference between features and design. Rather than adding new features, it focuses on making them fast and easy to use. I'm not saying GNOME 3 is perfect or for good for everyone, but I don't think it can be evaluated by its feature list.
For the record, I do think GNOME 3 is "substantially better" than previous versions, but I also understand that this is in no way an objective measure and it's perfectly reasonable for us not to hold the same opinion here.
I'm not evaluating it from the release notes--I was rereading them to make sure I wasn't just missing some major improvements I just hadn't noticed while using it. I don't think it's well designed at all, and it's certainly not polished at all, which is an important part of good design.
I suspect that most of the major changes have been on the back end, and that it is a substantially better platform to develop on. Unfortunately, that doesn't affect me at all as a user. I want to be able to run terminals and a web browser and not much else (and I don't think I'm alone in that), and so making Gnome a better environment to develop against is unlikely to make my life any better in the foreseeable future.
I second your feedback on gnome. I finally gave up on Ubuntu about 2 days ago because I persisted with gnome 3 for far too long. It makes simple things easier but everything else much harder.
I used to tell windows users why I preferred Ubuntu: 3 logical menus/auto sorted apps, clear separation between settings and administration. Then I was lumbered with this "kids toy" for tablets that made everything less clear (except the few pinned apps).
In this instance, Ubuntu lost me to mint Linux. I expect a similar backlash against Windows 8, although for slightly different reasons.
I think this is actually the source of a lot of unfounded hatred for Gnome 3. People aren't always fully aware that Ubuntu is not actually using Gnome Shell, and have instead created their own project, Unity, that just happens to use Gnome for the toolkit. Unity is completely separate from Gnome Shell, and works in quite a different fashion.
I've personally been a huge fan of Gnome 3 and Gnome Shell, and I still think Unity is a terrible, ugly mess. But because many still think that Ubuntu is just using Gnome, they project their distaste for Unity onto Gnome 3 instead of where it belongs...
So I went from MacOS X Lion to Gnome 3, and I have to say, it felt like a positive step -- Lion broke my model of multiple monitors and fullscreen applications; Gnome 3 has a different model to Gnome 2, which I think has been frustrating to people, but straight off the bat, it was better than Lion.
For the record, I do think GNOME 3 is "substantially better" than previous versions, but I also understand that this is in no way an objective measure and it's perfectly reasonable for us not to hold the same opinion here.