No, no one wants that (I hope). Read the Gruber preview and you'll feel more at ease. OS X and iOS are not merging. He describes Mountain Lion as "a series of steps toward defining a set of shared concepts, styles, and principles between two fundamentally distinct OSes."
OS X Safari tabs were added to the iPad version of Safari in iOS 5.
Most of the rest of the features that people are listing don't seem right, like both iOS and OS X have a search called Spotlight but they aren't very similar in UI.
The ports of iWork and GarageBand felt like that to me. iOS changing from a web-driven OS into something that can be much better compared to a desktop machine.
This strikes me as more of a transition period. Eventually mac sales will be controlled completely via the app store and its highly structured sand boxed environment. Gatekeeper allows runtime control. Icloud replaces the local file system. The style guide moves to the ipad side. And in a few years the mac just fades away...
I read the Gruber article too and I'm not totally at ease yet. In terms or UI I don't mind the new look of things but I do worry about things like iCloud. It's a really excellent idea but I'm not sure if I want my file system in the cloud. Not for security but just for control. I've been in love with the Mac for over five years now and I'm starting to worry. What if I want a different cloud file system other than iCloud? What if I want no cloud file system? Sure, right now it's no problem but what about the future?
It's no secret that Apple is basically creating a hardware software empire where everything from the physical computer to the peripherals to the software and even web services are all Apple. I've been fine with that because the Mac never tried to force things on me. I've always had the option to use a different email client, Dropbox, music player, etc. without any trouble but I'm afraid Apple will move OS X in the direction of Windows where the OS assumes you're going to use its preferred software and services and if you don't it either makes it a hassle to use alternatives or it continuously throws up those annoying notifications.
All that aside, I'm most afraid for how friendly it will be to developers. Snow Leopard was the last OS X that was perfect for me as a developer. In Lion I have to deal with things like LLVM as the default compiler outdated command line tools, some Ruby gems give me problems, the system won't allow you to save hidden files (i.e. ".htaccess") and the list goes on.
I know that developers and power users are in the minority and that for average folks who are all about media and entertainment with a little work thrown in Mountain Lion will be aweso,e out of the box. I'm glad they're making such an awesome system for those people but I feel like they're leaving developers out and not even giving us a way to switch off some of those default behaviors.
I'm only 25 but I feel like I sound like the old guy who thinks things were better "back in the old days". Maybe I am just resisting a good thing and I hope I learn to love it.
I believe your concerns are completely warranted. Lion was a a significant step in the wrong direction, and this sounds like an enthusiastic leap along the same unfortunate lines.
Sort of tangental, but I know the command line tools are not GNU but are they otherwise outdated? I used to install various GNU coreutils packages but decided they weren't really adding anything and in some cases (ls) they were removing functionality.
> the system won't allow you to save hidden files (i.e. ".htaccess") and the list goes on.
I don't believe that is true, unless you're having problems with a specific editor?
http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/mountain_lion