To me Canonical and Apple have always been very different. Canonical has no doubt drawn much inspiration from Apple in their user interface elements but I feel from there the comparison really tapers off. Canonical provides services. Apple sells products. Canonical sees value in attaching services like training and maintenance on top of free(as in beer and freedom), open source software. Apple sells hardware and closed source software.

This release is fully inline with that type of strategy. Canonical gives manufacturers the software that's completely modifiable, with sensible defaults, and free. Then provides training and support at a cost to anyone that needs it.

I don't know, I guess I feel that most of the comparisons between the companies are based on a very superficial user interface standpoint. They are quite different, with quite different goals, quite different values and quite different products. But they do both have windows with rounded corners.