I think you are missing some context.

Early Apple experiments in GUI design initially used multiple menu bars anchored to the tops of windows, but this was quickly dropped in favor of the current arrangement,[1] as it proved slower to use (in accordance with Fitts's law). The idea of separate menus in each application was later implemented in Microsoft Windows and is the default representation in most Linux desktop environments. – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menu_bar

This was in 1983, when Tognazzini was working on the Lisa, inventing some of the UI concepts we still use and very carefully considering efficiency when choosing them. You may disagree with him—his stance that the mouse is faster than a command line shell is widely controversial—but visual appeal was not nearly his main concern.