Gnome 3 has been released early this month under name Gnome Shell and two distributions have it now to try it by Linux users (Fedora and Suse distributions), I have tried the Fedora Live CD, if you didn’t try it yet, try it and you well see the next generation of Linux Desktops.
Gnome 3 require video card supporting hardware accelerators, so don’t try it with VMware player or Virtual box (I tried but didn’t work) ,in VMware or VirtualBox it will not run Gnome-shell and will run in a fallback mode as any older Gnome versions.
Wireless, sound, webcam work fine from Live CD, I liked many things with the new Gnome, first the maximize/minimize of windows, arrange multiple windows in workspace, switching between workspaces, adding your meetings/tasks in calendar located in panel and a lot more to explore.
From this few minutes experience with Gnome 3, i think Gnome Desktop may hit tablets business with this new desktop (After trying it, think if this desktop could be used with touch screen? I would say yes), as you may notice by trying it.
Here some screenshots instead of words:
Learning ... 
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Why am I getting the feeling they’re copying Mac?!
Everything is copying MAC, linux, windows, android…etc, the difference Linux make it cheap (free:)), so Apple think and opensource community make a free version of these thoughts.