Not That Great
OK I read your article and yet I still don't know what all the excitement is about. In 14.04 you can turn off the ads in the Search so there you go no more "spyware". Next you can move the the launcher to the bottom ? Wow ! Really ??? In Mate you can have a top panel you can add to, a bottom panel and a panel on the right or left. Mate is extremely flexible. Finally the big Calendar, true you cannot use the big calendar in Mate however, the calendar, lightning, comes standard with Thunderbird and you can even create a new calender according to your needs. This LTS is not all that great if you are set on Unity, Personally I am going to stick with Mate 16.04.