[barrkel]

No, it's easier to scan menus, because they are left-aligned lists of text. Ribbons have tiles of various sizes depending on measured importance of the action, and that busyness makes it harder to scan.

The lower screenshot looks like someone visually puked all over the top of it. It's got knobs and gizmos hanging out like a big mess of wires, something you'd expect to see in a stereotypical movie genius's garage, not a user-friendly UI.

(Touch UI is a complete red herring, IMO. You want different UIs for different input modalities. That's exactly the opposite of making your mouse UI look like a touch UI; that approach is just as bad as making your touch UI look like a mouse UI, which is roughly what Windows kept repeating and failing with tablets and "Windows for Pen Computing" - the failure here literally goes back decades.)

[crazygringo]

and that busyness makes it harder to scan.

I couldn't agree more. No idea why you're being downvoted, you make excellent points.