The gnome window title bars are obnoxiously thick and useless by default tho. I've found that Unity or even just Windows like styling in Gnome is a lot more respectful to your screen real estate.

I like the Gnome 2 title bars (Mate). Gnome wasn't always that bad.

That is a tradeoff that makes it nice when you have a convertible laptop.

I wish it was simply configurable from the settings dialogs.

It definitely needs improvement but for touchscreens it is good.