In my personal experience - as far as I can remember - it always stopped to be good looking when it wasn't a screenshot anymore but a running process on my machine. In motion, all the eye-candy became ugly and foolish and visibly hobbyist, and as soon as I began using some applications outside of the E-ecosystem, the last sparks of fanciness went away anyways.

But that was... idk... E16 or so?! I really cannot remember. Maybe it had better times earlier, or maybe (surely) people are different and have different criteria for choosing such things.

Was E13 before they started trying to be a klingon starship UI?