The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

It does sound like GNOME is going a bit too far in the "we do the thinking so you don't have to" direction. But I'm actually kind of glad-- it would be a shame if every desktop environment was designed for people who have used Linux desktops long enough to know exactly what they want. I'm certainly not worried that power users will be left without a desktop environment that they can customize to their liking.

Apple does something similar, though unsurprisingly with a massively larger budget they do a better job than GNOME. And there, too, I applaud an effort to make the system as usable as possible for everyone, even if it means leaving power users like myself unhappy with the lack of options.