There are a number of reasons why Unity happened, all of them good. Difficulties getting Gnome 2 changes upstream, differences in vision between the Ubuntu desktop needs and the Gnome developers, and delivery date issues with Gnome 3 were among some of the reasons, yes.
There was a very vocal minority of shouties in various forums that spewed their venemous hate at Unity but by and large most people who tried it really liked it and I still get very positive feedback from non-technical users even today when they find out I was heavily involved in that project.
The criticism levied in the feature article is the same tired old one that boiled down to "I didn't like it because it wasn't the Microsoft Windows I used when I was first learning." There is always a certain merit to the "all change is bad" argument, but since it's entirely based on visceral reaction and not technical merit or rational discourse, it can be difficult to use to convince others without appearing petulant.
I'm mostly sympathetic to the decision to leave Gnome: I myself abandoned KDE after the 3 -> 4 transition and then Gnome after the 2 -> 3 transition. I just never found the Unity desktop pleasant to use, so I ended up running tiling window managers for a while.
There was a very vocal minority of shouties in various forums that spewed their venemous hate at Unity but by and large most people who tried it really liked it and I still get very positive feedback from non-technical users even today when they find out I was heavily involved in that project.
The criticism levied in the feature article is the same tired old one that boiled down to "I didn't like it because it wasn't the Microsoft Windows I used when I was first learning." There is always a certain merit to the "all change is bad" argument, but since it's entirely based on visceral reaction and not technical merit or rational discourse, it can be difficult to use to convince others without appearing petulant.