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“Lion is going to bring a lot of iOS back to the Mac. We’re going to see revamped user interfaces for Mail, iCal, borrowing from those icon metaphors and UI styles,” Alvares writes. “Everything is going to look much cleaner than before, much like QuickTime X did with its previous version (though I hope not at the cost of power and functionality). But where iOS segregates its functionality into ‘apps’, the Mac will feature a more integrated workflow of its different services. Imagine the Mail app featuring the Address Book and iCal interfaces in one single glorified window. The same addressbook showing up in iChat, ready for FaceTime.”
Alvares writes, “The thought of running iOS apps on a mouse/keyboard environment is sour at best, and Apple would never go for it. Those are touch based user interfaces, depending on a lot of functionality inherent on those devices, that would not work on any Mac as we know it. They just wouldn’t work. But what if Apple introduces a new way of writing Mac specific applications that are kind of like iOS apps?”
Read more speculation in the full article – recommended – here.