Kyle Baxter compares Windows 8 to Mac OS X Lion, but here’s the salient point:
Lion borrows heavily from iOS both in concept (App Store, Launchpad, gestures, full-screen applications) and in appearance (user interface elements that resemble popovers introduced on the iPad). Apple could merely be adopting good ideas that iOS introduced to improve Mac OS, but I think there’s something more going on. I think Apple’s attempting to converge Mac OS and iOS.
I think that’s exactly what Apple is moving toward, and as a hardware company, it makes the most sense for them to keep the user experience similar, if not identical, across all of the devices they sell. I jokingly told my friend that the “One More Thing” at the WWDC 2011 Keynote would be that iOS 5 and OS X Lion are now one unified operating system. While he agrees that that is the end goal, it is a bit soon for Apple to push that change onto their customers, but wait for two or three years.
Apple is seeking to make the technology irrelevant, so we can use these devices to do—to make, to create, to be inspired from. Don’t worry about what processor or display it has. Just read. Just write. Just draw. Just do. (Kyle Baxter, Apple’s Mobile Strategy is to Make the Technology Irrelevant)