I thought the reason for them being on the left is that they're reserving the top-right of the screen for notifications, the "social" menu and other things that may overlap with the window buttons.
I hadn't heard that, got a link? I guess that points to that PR failure I was speaking of though, I have been following this and I haven't heard that once.
I will say though, having heard that, it doesn't sound like a very good reason for the switch.
In 9.04 every time there was a notification you had to wait for it to disappear before you could click on the buttons. In 9.10 they moved the notifications down a bit as a hack around that.
Now in 10.04 the notifications are where they were but they've introduced a social menu & moved the lock screen / switch user / shutdown menu to the top-right.
If they hadn't moved the buttons it would be very easy to accidentally close a window when you meant to use those new menus.
That does make sense (though I still think its strange that Shuttleworth hasn't mentioned this), as a 9.04 user I've found the notifications problematic for that reason.
Wouldn't the obvious answer be to move the notifications down to the bottom right, like windows does it? I mean you'd probably have to move the system tray down there as well, but really, it makes more sense.
You don't have to wait to interact with anything underneath the notifications. When you move the mouse over the bubble, it blurs or goes invisible, and you can click avay at things underneath it without worry.
