The plan for moving the buttons to the left like on the Mac are to
open space on the right for a new feature to be added with Maverick
(10.10). They are being dubbed Windicators and they will change
depending on the application. On a text editor it will show whether
you have saved or not, on a file manager they may indicate disk usage,
on a file transfer application they may show percentage complete, etc.

Ubuntu is not content with the status quo. They want to be leaders and
innovators and usability is their focus. We saw a glimpse of this with
Lucid with the new theme and the MeMenu. These are just the beginning.
In Maverick they expect to have an improved sound applet and
notification area. As part of the notification improvements they want
to restrict applications from minimizing to the notification area.

Another factor in moving the buttons to the left was they are often
covered by notification popups. Personally I think that it is also
about moving as far away from Windows look as possible and we know
that Shuttleworth sees the Mac as the standard for usability and
Windows as the competition. It is all about being different and
offering an alternative.

I feel that GNOME users are in for a rough ride. As a group they do
not like change and GNOME 3 (which may or may not make it into 10.10)
has more change than many users will accept. KDE users have been
through this change and it was far from well received and they are
much more open than GNOME users. Ubuntu users will have a double
whammy, GNOME 3 plus Ubuntu's own changes.

The Ubuntu community will come to the rescue as always and there will
be solutions to every problem.. for the patient.