Stand by for the word from the original refusenik...

Reading through this list, the one problem with this suggestion is that it is -- imo -- ugly. The switcher at middle of top bar really sticks out from otherwise clean and minimalistic design, and as such it would feel very distracting indeed.

I think I agree with gnome 3 design team's idea that they want people to focus on one task and to minimize any distraction that interfere with the work being done. Do you remember how awful using Windows XP was, how the design sensibilities of that era made companies load a dozen of backgrounded applications, each which their own, bizarrely multicolored icon adding visual noise at the bottom of screen, and worse, all of them pop up notifications that say something you don't care about while you try to work?

OS X imo has the best virtual desktop scheme of all the operating systems right now. For instance, desktop switching is enabled by 4-finger gesture: 4-finger flick up moves into overview mode where you see every virtual desktop at glance in the top row, and all the windows inside, and you can rearrange the order of the desktops and even move windows between them. While using applications, 4-finger flicks left/right switch between desktops, so you can switch between neighboring virtual desktops (= neighboring fullscreen applications) very comfortably.