Is Precise gearing up for another change to App Menu behaviour?

Sort of.

New code aimed at ‘the implementation of locally integrated menubars‘ has been proposed for ‘merging’ into Metacity, Unity, Light Themes and Compiz. The code is also linked to a bug report titled ‘Global menu is not ergonomical on large screens‘.

I’m told that whilst the LIM feature is new and likely to feature in Ubuntu 12.04 it will be optional and not the default behaviour.

A small image asset is available that displays the ‘LIM’ on a maximised window: –

Ubuntu Forums via Matthew G