Comment 4 for bug 857627

I agree the switcher is not clear enough to navigate visually. It often takes me a moment or two longer than it should to figure out which app is highlighted.

It's one thing to have coloured app backgrounds on the launcher but when it comes to the alt-tab switcher I think these colours compared to the relative lack of visual contrast of the hilighted item make for poor usability. And usability should come before visual appeal.

The Gnome-shell switcher is much cleaner, simpler, and more obvious which item is hilighted, eg:
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=shortcuts-Alt-Tab.png

If you compare the differences here, you see all the extraneous information the Unity switcher is presenting the user who just wants to quickly switch app: coloured backgrounds on each app, 3d effect boarders on each app, a boarder around the whole switcher, and boarder lines on either side of the boarder around the switcher... Talk about over-complicated.