I think its easy to see that Apple is at a tipping point with this - and not a good one. I have used Apple products for my primary work functions for nearly a decade now - servers, laptops, networking equipment. (I still use PC technology as well - my customers all use PC's - but the software I develop is always developed on a Mac first.)
Steve Jobs has been reported to say that he is grateful that devices like the iPad and iPhone hide the notion of files, the "Finder" or "Explorer", etc. from the user. I can understand this because he wants people to use things like iPads instead of "computers". iPads represent a neat, clean business model for him - no real support issues, no one calling with software problems, no muss, no fuss as they used to say.
But with Lion this is taken to the extreme.
For example, on my MacBook Pro laptop there is an integrated touch pad. A "two finger gesture" of swiping up or down scrolls the screen - albeit in the opposite direction. (When I move my two fingers up the screen scrolls down and vice versa.) On an iPad where you are scrolling the actual view you are looking at the opposite is true - dragging your finger down drags the image or view down and exposes more of the top of the document or view.
Sadly, out-of-the-box, Lion works like an iPad scrolling the screen in the opposite direction from Snow Leopard, its predecessor.
Nice.
How about changing the direction of gravity as well? Or the direction water flows to up?
Making a Mac like an iPad is fine if someone is only a casual user.
But I have to ask Steve "What about the rest of us?"
I am a software developer and I like (save for comments I have made here about the latest XCode 4 platform) the environment - particularly for software development.
(Whenever someone asks why I would spend so much more money on a MacBook Pro than, say, some $1,000 USD PC laptop I reply with a simple question: How much time during a given day do you stare at a spinning hour glass, frozen screen, etc.? The answer is almost always at least ten minutes. I point out that that's 2,500 minutes a year or about a week of time - useless while you sit idle. I then point out that my time is worth at least $2,500 USD a week and so buying something that eliminates $2,500 USD of wasted time and money is at least a break even for me, i.e., it doesn't really cost me anything, plus I am not disrupted by random delays and thrashing in the middle of work which makes me more productive.)
I like the Mac, I like the way it is, it works well for what I do as it I am sure does for others as well.
The iPad is fine for what it does as well - but it doesn't do software development - and that's what I need to do.
Sadly, when companies reach a certain critical mass and mass market they forget what got them there in the first place. Apple today is nothing like it used to be. Today its a consumer giant - and that's fine and good for them.
(I worked in a NYC law firm and the partner next to my office did the initial IPO for Apple back in about 1980 or so - some 30 years ago. Look where they are today - with some 70 billion dollars US in cash plus the iPad/iPhone market - who'd have thunk it back in 1980.)
But getting so large and so consumerish comes with a price - the price of always having to make big leaps forward. When you're that large then all the small predators see you (or the food that falls out the sides of your mouth or your droppings) as a meal ticket - just like Apple did when it first started up all those years ago.
I have complained here about XCode 4 as well - its the same mentality as Lion - creating all powerful, wondrous UI's that do everything.
But sadly they do it badly.
Steve - I know you are off on health leave and this is usually what happens when the founder loses control, but geez...
Messing with the core products developers use to create Apps for your App Stores is a bad thing - particularly when you make stupid and pointless changes to UI's for the sake of consistency with another, to my mind, unrelated product.
I like your existing OS X products as computer products - they are not consumer products.
I like your consumer products as consumer products - I own and use those two.
I do not like you changing the former into the latter because the former is not broken.
I agree with you that the market for consumer products is far larger than for computer products. But I would like to make a living (and help you with yours) by developing software for your consumer products on your computer products.
Please don't break the value and wonder of your products for software people - after all its the lifeblood of your App world.
Don't castrate OS X to make it more "consumer friendly". Its not really a consumer product. iOS is.
We need it to do what it does today without making it into a "me too" iOS shadow of its former self.
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