Will Unity continue to feature 'geriatric' animations by design?

Unity isn't a desktop environment. It is a shell for Gnome.

You can speed up the animations like so:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/10/how-to-speed-up-ubuntu-12-10-minimize-animation

You can change the animation times in ccsm. You can get the command by installing compizconfig-settings-manager

OK, shell it is.

The Dash is 'The window to the world' of Unity and its animations can't be tuned. Please refer to the askubuntu link in the OP.

You can tweak in ccsm

You don't have to use Unity if you don't like it.

You can have something close to the old 10.04 experience by running

sudo apt-get instal gnome-panel

Then reboot and next to the login box select the circular icon. You can then select "Gnome Classic" or "Gnome Classic (No Effects)"

Alternatively Xubuntu, Kubuntu and Lubuntu have different desktops.

@warren-hill
The thing is I actually like Unity. It's just the animations... Anyway, what I was really looking for is ***some sort of mentioning of Unity team plans to include an option to disable animations or at least to shorten them***. An answer from a Unity dev team member would be great.

I don't see the point to report it as a bug. It's there for over a year. I'll probably get a 'It's by design' reply anyway.

I suspect you are correct. You could try adding an idea suggestion here

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

Something along the lines of re-introducing a simplified version of Unity, a bit like Unity 2D which was in 12.04 but has been removed from 12.10.

Still like Unity but slightly simplified graphics to run faster or on less powerful PCs and without as many (or any) animations.

Re-introducing Unity 2D won't happen. Canonical has decided already. LLVM (???) will be used instead to transfer the load from lacking GPU to CPU. You can read about it on phoronix.com.

Anyway, if anyone sees any (even) rumors about introduction of customizable animation times in Unity, please do let me know. I'd like to stick to Unity but minus the cursing, as it is now :)

Also if someone could re-compile Unity to include the following modification which >>>disables Unity animations<<< we would be all set. I'm also sure a PPA with Unity modified in such a way would get very popular. My question on the subject at askubuntu.com has hit 3000 views already and the number is growing http://askubuntu.com/questions/138622/how-to-disable-all-unity-animations

Back to bussiness - the modification of Unity code which would disable animations has been described here:
http://askubuntu.com/a/169634/
(unity-5.12/plugins/unityshell/src/ShortcutController.cpp)

If you want a fast desktop, use LXDE. So much faster.