This is so true. And, unfortunately, this rot is not limited to GNOME only IMHO. In the good old days the desktop environments used to be cool and functional. I mean look at kde 2 and compare it with windows 98. Or take kde 3+compiz and compare it with xp and windows vista. Those desktop environments were different, has an unique style and blowing the minds of the windows + mac users. I mean compiz for god's sake. A lot of my friends' eyes go wide when I started rolling my desktop left and right and said it is all native, and uses this much of ram.
Having said all of that, let's take a gander to kde 4 and gnome 3. Can you really see that kind of difference and coolness? I, for one, can't see it. What I see is desktop interfaces which tries to macify themselves, which is sad.
I'm not sure I would use compiz as a shining example of something that makes a desktop more functional.
Regarding the differences between Gnome 3 and KDE 4: I haven't tried Gnome 3, but from I've read (including TFA), they go out of their way to make the desktop not configurable. Before switching to awesome and then Xmonad, I was a heavy user of KDE 4, and it is extremely customizable. It also had some novel ideas about grouping widgets/applications depending on the current activity of the user, which is probably implemented by now, and which I don't think is present in GNOME 3.
Having said all of that, let's take a gander to kde 4 and gnome 3. Can you really see that kind of difference and coolness? I, for one, can't see it. What I see is desktop interfaces which tries to macify themselves, which is sad.