I think the comparison with Grub is a little unfair--if you look at a distro like OpenSUSE[1], the grub screen actually looks very good. You still can't use the mouse, but I would happily trade speed for that, especially since using the keyboard to select the right system is easier and faster anyhow.

[1]: http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~tikhon/openSUSE-grub.jpg

That said, I'm really happy that people are moving towards prettier interfaces everywhere. Why don't distros like Ubunutu or Fedora do the same?