"The other thing I dislike about Unity is the Launcher bar. It's never big enough for me, mainly because of the confusion between "apps I might like to use often" and "apps I'm using right now"."

I have had the same complaint regarding the TaskBar in Windows since Vista. It's also one of the (many) reasons I dislike W8; at least in previous versions I could still use the Start Menu. It's depressing to realize bad design isn't limited to one team.