It's ancient history now, but gnome didn't used to look like poor imitation of Apple's design. Then the dev decided that macOS UI was superior and you will like it unconditionally.
I mean, it is probably not a bad idea to take a look at one of the most well-loved DEs for ideas.. and Gnome did take only good things from it and my subjective opinion is that they have a proper vision taking many of the good things from OSX.