Unity is a long way from perfect on tablet or PC. Having said that the sidebar has grown on me. Since almost every monitor out there is 16:9; vertical space is precious and another 50 pixels gives me another 2-3 lines of code on the screen.
The best way to use the sidebar is to put your most commonly used program at the top and then launch them with Logo+<Number>.
If you spend some time setting up your shortcut keys you can actually use much of your system mouse free.
So I'm not really sure that it is targeted towards tablets. It could however be adapted to be tablet friendly a lot more easily than the MS Windows interface or older Window managers could be.
So rather than having this jarring difference between Metro and Desktop like you do in Windows 8 they could have a much more subtle transition of the same interface depending on whether a mouse/keyboard was plugged in or not.
Unity randomly loses focus of the active window for me, making it pretty annoying to use with the keyboard.
Additionally, it is hard to remember which number activates which program in the side-bar, and unfortunately it waits a long time before showing the numbers when pressing Winkey.
The old shortcuts to maximize/minimize windows (Alt-F10, Alt-F9) were replaced with more clunky shortcuts (Ctrl+Alt+5, Ctrl+Alt+0).
All in all, Unity was a pretty big regression over Gnome 2, when it comes to keyboard operability.
I just wish that Logo+<Number> didn't require you to hold the Logo key for a second or so before you press the number. I want quicker switching between apps than that.
While it is very true that Unity is slow to launch applications I regularly launch a browser with Logo+1 hitting both immediately and releasing. The browser is launched and the side bar never even makes an appearance. You don't need to wait for the side bar to slide out. :)
I just install Synapse, which is very similar to the Quicksilver app on the Mac. Control+Space and you can type the name of the application that you wish to launch.
Better auto-completion (I can type ref and it'll find Firefox and anything else that matches). Better file finding (I can take a screenshot and type 'scr' to find my screenshot instantly). Imgur uploading (I can find my screenshot, tab, down, enter to upload to imgur, copies url into my clipboard). Hooks into media players. Hooks into OS (can logout, suspend, shutdown). Better UX, left/right/up/down/tab are all binded to something useful. Faster. Can run on stuff besides Unity.
The best way to use the sidebar is to put your most commonly used program at the top and then launch them with Logo+<Number>.
If you spend some time setting up your shortcut keys you can actually use much of your system mouse free.
So I'm not really sure that it is targeted towards tablets. It could however be adapted to be tablet friendly a lot more easily than the MS Windows interface or older Window managers could be.
So rather than having this jarring difference between Metro and Desktop like you do in Windows 8 they could have a much more subtle transition of the same interface depending on whether a mouse/keyboard was plugged in or not.