What Happened to the Menu Bars?

Shell Blog (via Dan Crevier):

One of the first things people notice when they start using Vista is the absence of menu bars.  Explorer, photo gallery, media player, and IE all don’t show menus by default and just use the so-called “command module.”  What is up with that?  Do we hate menu bars?  And more importantly—what is the guidance that third-party developers are supposed to follow?  Let me break it down for you.

Update: John Gruber adds:

This trend is dangerous for Adobe, methinks—it’s getting less and less tenable for them to continue shipping Mac and Windows apps that are so similar in design. They’re either going to ship Mac versions that don’t feel Mac-like, Windows versions that don’t feels Windows-like, or, both.

I was going to write something about how his first option is already happening, but then this post from Derek K. Miller popped into NetNewsWire, saving me the trouble.