I think that's what they're trying to do. There are definite characteristics from Win7 and OSX (moreso the latter). It's just that it's not working terribly well at this stage. With some polish, I'm sure it will be better, but still a re-hash.

I would much rather see, as you mention, something a little more bold like the MeeGo UI, rather than a re-iteration of decades old concepts.

Consider improving the graphical toolset for drawing applications. Look at Androids use of fragments and a 3D API, and iOS's paned displays. This type of functionality would be a welcome part of the UI and certainly make this a viable tablet-friendly OS. Also, innovations in simplifying the development problem, or even cross-binary executable or a new-type of repository. Even existing concepts like exposing the web as an interface, or tighter integration of web-apps.

Pushing out in these fresh directions requires vision -- a characteristic that Canonical seems to lack. To be fair, they produce a distribution, which by definition is mostly a collection of already existing parts -- I would expect that innovation is new territory. However, with vision comes the implementation of new things, rather than a perpetual game of catch-up.