not to mention that i've yet to have as bug-free an experience on elementary as i have on vanilla ubuntu, or opensuse with kde, or a really basic arch + i3 install, or kali with gnome 3, or (the list goes on).
the unearned appreciation of elementary has always baffled me. i mean, the developers are not hacks or anything. i quite liked geary, and i'm fine with distros multiplying (why not? just use what you want, it doesn't matter). but elementary is barely any more mac-ish than ubuntu with unity, and it's always felt like the beta version of someone's side project.
to sum up, i'm happy that they have interest in their project, and i respect the effort they put into it. however, most of the praise for elementary seems to come from and for the wrong places; it's not particularly polished or user friendly (they have a history of "i'll choose for you," but not in as an intuitive way as Apple), its thematically unified design does not last unless you either use a vanilla install forever or put in just as much linux-y work in maintaining your install as you would w/ arch or debian or ubuntu (and you cared about how everything looks).
to me, elementary is a nice little niche distro like bodhi linux. it's bizarre to me that people can use it as a main system unless they're very advanced (read: they play with config files like a sysadmin and code decently in at least bash), and it's outright unthinkable that people use it for anything beyond checking email if they're keeping a vanilla install. this stuff keeps the ecosystem healthy, but the articles and comments i read about it look like they're coming from people who simply don't use linux that much (and aren't aware that all the good things they see in elementary are done better in other distros).
I used elementary myself for about half a year as my main system and have a bit of a split opinion on it myself. On the one hand, I did find the design to be very appealing - and contrary to what you claim, I haven't seen as nice a design anywhere else in the Linux world. (I may not be an old hand yet, but I've come around a bit.) I love how the whole desktop just works together to produce a very satisfying visual experience, and some of their homegrown apps are really sweet (specifically the text editor Scratch, but also the file browser).
However, I can also confirm what you say about bugs - a vanilla Ubuntu LTS is quite a bit more stable than eOS is. Having said that, most of the bugs I encountered on eOS were either avoidable (by switching the browser to Firefox, for example) or I could live with them. The one I found most annoying was a bug in the music app that didn't let me save songs to a playlist. I did actually dig into the source code for that one, but eventually gave it up and went back to trusty old (terminal!) mocp.
All in all, I enjoyed using eOS, but when the time came for me to buy a new laptop, I decided to go back to Ubuntu. ElementaryOS is a great project that deserves more attention (and more programmers working on it), but unfortunately does still feel too much like a perpetual beta. I'll keep my eyes on it, hopefully some day I'll go back, but not just yet.
> the articles and comments i read about it look like they're coming from people who simply don't use linux that much (and aren't aware that all the good things they see in elementary are done better in other distros).
This was simply a "surface" observation of mine too, until I've first hand met people who were impressed with it, and haven't actually used used Linux, but merely used it occasionally.
the unearned appreciation of elementary has always baffled me. i mean, the developers are not hacks or anything. i quite liked geary, and i'm fine with distros multiplying (why not? just use what you want, it doesn't matter). but elementary is barely any more mac-ish than ubuntu with unity, and it's always felt like the beta version of someone's side project.
to sum up, i'm happy that they have interest in their project, and i respect the effort they put into it. however, most of the praise for elementary seems to come from and for the wrong places; it's not particularly polished or user friendly (they have a history of "i'll choose for you," but not in as an intuitive way as Apple), its thematically unified design does not last unless you either use a vanilla install forever or put in just as much linux-y work in maintaining your install as you would w/ arch or debian or ubuntu (and you cared about how everything looks).
to me, elementary is a nice little niche distro like bodhi linux. it's bizarre to me that people can use it as a main system unless they're very advanced (read: they play with config files like a sysadmin and code decently in at least bash), and it's outright unthinkable that people use it for anything beyond checking email if they're keeping a vanilla install. this stuff keeps the ecosystem healthy, but the articles and comments i read about it look like they're coming from people who simply don't use linux that much (and aren't aware that all the good things they see in elementary are done better in other distros).