When I started using Ubuntu back in Gutsy(7.10) we looked like this.
And now we look like this.
We are getting a nice new logo too and our own font (in 10.10 for the font) so we are quickly becoming hugely competitive. On looks and hardware support alone we are up there with Apple and Microsoft but we have some cool stuff too. Ubuntu One is the thing that sets us apart. We can share our files across all our computers or share with friends, sync up notes and contacts and we will all be able to buy music soon(although you can do that with iTunes too but still its nice).
For developers since Gutsy we are after getting a lot easier with Quickly, Quickly-widgets and Desktop Couch.
One thing I have to say is ill miss the brown (ish) it was our signature for a long time and I hope that people dont knock it too much we could have had a worse colour(#3ACDA9) 
So we can all be happy with the progress we are after making and congrats to everyone who made it happen.
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Ubuntu One will be so much more appealing if it was able to sync with Windows and Mac computers as well.
Thats being worked on though. Although you can get them at one.ubuntu.com anyway..
Yep, starting to look classy now, as long as they keep away from blue and greens, that’s much too common.
View #2 is certainly much closer to what we want to have. Finally someone cleaned up the notification area an implemented much cleared icons.
However we are absolutely not there in terms of looks, to compare with Mac OS X. On a Mac, every program looks good because it uses the same widgets, same consistent layout and padding (and other small details), it is hard to make a program that looks ugly. To reach that requires very long planning ahead. And a toolkit that makes it hard to design ugly UIs.
I never had a problem with the colour brown. I really like the new look though.