Is the Macintosh Menubar Preferred?

The Macintosh is one of the very few desktop operating systems that shares a central, common, menubar across all applications. Even NextStep and Be operating systems, which were founded by former Apple execs, avoided the MacOS style menubar.

Is there a reason for this? Do users find the per-application menubar more preferable? I've never heard any complaints about the MacOS menubar.