One of the biggest complaints about OS X Lion these days is that Apple tried a little too hard to embed iOS elements, forgetting that long-time Mac users might be confused. Or they might object to being confronted with such choices, such as scrolling that proceeds in a direction opposite to what you’re accustomed to.

So we take this further: Lion has more gestures, so if you have an Apple Magic Trackpad, a MacBook or MacBook Pro, a Magic Mouse or similar device, you can let your fingers do all sorts of fancy twists and turns and pinches to make wonderful things happen on your Mac’s screen. Launchpad is supposed to mimic the app display on your iPhone or iPad, at the expense of creating tremendous opportunities for screen clutter if you have lots and lots of apps, as I do. And, yes, I did discharge it from the Dock on the first day I installed Lion.

Apple also wanted to simplify such menial chores as saving and checking previous versions of your document. In the Auto Save feature, Save As is replaced by Duplicate/Save. But this is a specific area where Apple’s best intentions are not good enough. Far too many apps do not support Lion’s features. While many will be updated in the next few months, you may have to wait a lot longer for some, such as the components of Adobe’s Creative Suite. But I do expect Microsoft Office’s Lion updates will come far sooner, since they are at least promised, along with some 10.7 bug fixes.

The Mission Control feature, an Expose variant that puts all of your document windows and virtual desktops in a single place for quick perusal or access, has potential downsides. With lots of stuff opened, it could also create the climate for clutter and confusion, particularly if you are just getting by on your 11-inch MacBook Air.

Some of the interface changes, such as gray scroll bars, and gray icons on Finder windows and such, seem compromises to serve some unknown design ethic. Apple seems to want to make the OS so minimalist you won’t know it’s there, except when you engage functions that require its presence. You shouldn’t have to know where your files are located, since the All My Files folder in the Finder’s sidebar will let you keep tabs on your recent documents without having to figure where you put them. That can be a good thing when it comes to alleviating confusion. But it won’t keep you from dropping those files in the usual unlikely locations.

Of course, some of the extras in Lion can be tamed. You can restore the direction of scrollbars in the Mouse preference pane. Scrollbars can be displayed all the time under General settings. At least the menu bar hasn’t been hidden, as Microsoft has done with its treacherous ribbons. Indeed, the early scuttlebutt about Windows 8 has it that the Windows Explorer file manager will eschew menu bars and replace them with ribbons too. Sure, you’ll be able to change it back, but Microsoft seems to think you’d do better to locate the commands you want collected among loads of icons, rather than click on a specific menu.

The power users who write blogs and other tech content have mixed ratings about Lion. They regard the changes as a sort of dumbing down of the Mac OS, in a sense betraying experienced users who don’t want or need all that extra fluff, and would prefer to stick with the old ways of doing things. But since Lion’s excesses can usually be tamed in System Preferences or banished from the desktop, I suppose it really doesn’t make a difference. Giving customers a choice isn’t a bad thing, so long as they aren’t confronted with too many changes. But these are, at least, non-destructive.

With Apple, you are usually forced to face the future, even if you had other ideas, although there are occasional ways to revert to your previous habits. When the floppy disk was banished from the iMac, there were external drives that suited the purpose mostly, except for the inability to read single-density floppies. But who had those in 1998? Raise your hands (I know I did).

With Lion, I suspect Apple has a larger goal than simply blurring the differences between the iOS and OS X. At the same time, new Mac users will find a shorter learning curve, not to mention less time adapting from one interface to the other when moving among different Apple gadgets. That seamless integration is designed to entice you to go all Apple. If you’re used to the way it’s done on your iPhone or iPad 2, guess what? The Mac is sort of similar, and may become more similar as time goes by.

Yes, Microsoft realizes that some level of integration between mobile hardware and desktop hardware is also a good thing. But they will likely accomplish the goal in a typically clumsy fashion, whereas Apple will continue to make it seem almost natural. You can take that to the bank, because that’s where Apple is going with all their profits.

So Apple continues to make a little headway in stopping Samsung from selling gear that allegedly copies patented elements of the iPhone and iPad. It’s not that you can’t buy mobile products with Samsung’s name on them, but wins in Germany and elsewhere demonstrate that Apple may indeed be on the right track in their ongoing complaints.

Now I do agree with those skeptical about the whole process when they say that you can’t innovate by filing lawsuits against competitors. Without being  a patent attorney, I’ll also accept the opinion that patents are being granted that are too broad. But even the proposed patent reform bill being considered by Congress in the U.S. isn’t really going to change that situation very much.

So that situation forces companies who want to protect their intellectual property to file as many patent applications as they can, and, with larger firms, having a team of lawyers on staff to protect their rights. Whether Apple or some other company is overeager to file those complaints is up to the courts to decide, and one hopes they will not just follow the law, but exercise a modicum of common sense in their rulings — although I realize that laws do not necessarily follow common sense.

The biggest defense against Apple is that these companies independently developed their technologies and products, and didn’t copy Apple. Maybe. But if you look at the product timelines of smartphones before and after the iPhone hit the streets, you’ll see a curious change. Where once they all seemed to follow the BlackBerry mold with tiny physical keyboards, after the iPhone became hugely popular, suddenly they began to sport touchscreens and shapes that, unless you looked real close, seemed to closely resemble the iPhone. I’m not saying Apple’s patents prevent other companies from cribbing those design influences, but that’s what’s clearly happened.

At the same time, if you look at designs for tablet-based computers prior to the iPad, you’ll find many had only passing resemblance, mostly possessing small screens and relatively compact form factors. Once the iPad appeared, all those tablets using the Android OS, WebOS, and so forth and so on, seemed cut from the same iPad cloth. Again, I don’t know if those manufacturers have the legal right to do this, but that’s what clearly happened.

Here’s another example: Shortly after the first Bondi Blue iMac appeared in August of 1998, other companies began to build their own all-in-one computers with pear-shaped exteriors sporting bright plastics. Some used similar colors, and I do recall (and I’m taking this from memory) Apple stopping some of these competitors from building their iMac clones.

You can go back to the very first versions of Windows, which were barely unusable, and still observe telling resemblances to the Mac OS, although in a clunkier, less refined fashion. Apple attempted to sue Microsoft in those days for these alleged offenses, but failed largely because Bill Gates was able to license portions of the Mac interface from Apple CEO John Scully, certainly a very stupid move.

Years later, when Gates and Jobs essentially shook hands during a keynote address, via satellite, and declared the OS wars over, they cross-licensed patents, and made other agreements that meant, in fact, that Apple and Microsoft wouldn’t sue each other. Indeed, Apple and Microsoft, though fierce rivals in some ways, continue to work together in areas that are mutually profitable. So you still have Office for the Mac, and the Bing search engine is available as an option in Safari for Mac OS X and the iOS.

When Apple helped stake the purchase of thousands of Nortel telecom patents for billions of dollars, the deal included Microsoft, RIM and other companies. They will all play well together when it is strategically useful to do so. Indeed, the iPhone trademark was actually owned by Cisco, who happily accepted a check from Apple to allow them to use the name. It’s not as if Cisco intends to build an iPhone clone.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that Apple isn’t heavily influenced by the designs pioneered by other companies, although those influences might require a little research to nail down. Certainly the ability to resize a document window in Lion from all sides is very close to the way you do it in Windows. Don’t forget the Window menu, and the Help menu; the latter used to be a balloon icon in the old days.

At the same time, Microsoft is evidently adding monochrome icons for Windows 8, similar to what you see in Lion for better or worse. Mac users will have a laugh at Microsoft’s expense. Apple executives might also chuckle about it in public and all, but the two companies will continue to cooperate where it’s appropriate.

Those who care to research such things in more detail can produce a long list of operating system and third-party utilities that have inspired Apple to incorporate certain features in Mac OS X. But that sort of inspiration evidently seldom rises to the level of patent infringement, for otherwise you’d see Apple engaged in many more lawsuits.

In an ideal world, I suppose patents will only be granted for real innovations, not just for taking some common sense ideas and entering them in a patent application. But this is certainly not the sort of change you can expect or believe in. So the lawsuits will continue.

With Lion signalling an apparent merger of at least some iOS features on the Mac, there’s more and more speculation as to Apple’s end game. Do they ultimately intend to combine the two operating systems, thus offering a seamless experience among iPhones, iPads, and Macs? If that happens, would Apple, in turn, ditch Intel processors and replace them with Apple’s own processors based on ARM technology.

I suppose this seems sensible at first blush. After all, Apple’s mobile gadgets are incredibly fast, with near-instant boot and app launch times. So why not put the very same chips on, say, a MacBook Air?

Now when it comes to Apple, you certainly can’t predict what they plan to do six months from now, let alone two or three years. So nothing ought to be off the table, but some of this speculation doesn’t quite pass the logic test.

First and foremost, the reason Apple’s mobile processors seem so fast is that they aren’t being asked to do near the amount of tasks they’d have to perform on a traditional personal computer. The iOS and all those apps are optimized to operate with extreme efficiency on a computing device that runs at roughly the same speed as a Mac of, say, eight years ago. While it’s a sure thing Apple will be speeding up their A-series chips in the years to come, expecting them to match, or closely match, Intel’s processors seems a stretch. That would require Intel virtually standing still while the mobile processors close the gap.

Besides, why would Apple want to cripple Macs in that fashion? One of the big selling points of a Mac these days is virtually instant response for most any task you want to perform, except for heavy-duty rendering tasks that require the fastest multicore processors, and the speediest drives available. Certainly the growth of solid state drives on Macs would make up some of the performance gap, but not for processor intensive work. Besides, why would Apple force developers to undergo a new processor transformation without an upside?

What the pundits who talk of a Mac with an A6 or A7 processor (assuming that model designation will continue) seem to forget is that, while Apple has managed to make their operating system work on different processors with great efficiency and reliability, what about the software? An app that supports Intel would have to be recompiled to run on the ARM-family processors that Apple uses as the basis for their home-brewed chip designs. There are still apps out there that won’t even run on Intel processors, and that transition occurred in 2006. Apple has discontinued the Rosetta emulation app that allows you to run PowerPC software for Lion, and that’s one reason some can’t upgrade unless they can find replacement apps, or the apps they’re using are upgraded.

Sure, Apple can devise a new emulation layer to deal with such issues for the next processor migration, but, again, why? Sure, if Intel’s processor roadmap goes off the cliff in the next few years, Apple would seek alternatives. But they could consider AMD, who makes chips that are compatible with Intel’s in terms of running the very same operating systems. Yes, Apple’s motives may at times be inscrutable to outsiders, but what they do ultimately tends to make a lot of sense when you begin to see the goal post.

Granted Apple might want to do more to unify OS X and the iOS in the years to come, largely to make it easier for customers to move from one to the other. It’s also quite possible more and more Mac and Windows users will decide that the iPad suits them just fine and abandon the traditional personal computer. In fact, the main justifications for Apple’s alleged OS meld and ditching Intel processors is to accommodate the reality that fewer and fewer people will need a real PC. Traditional computers will be confined to so-called “prosumers” and business customers, and those numbers will probably decline in time.

But so long as Apple can make healthy profits selling several million Macs every quarter, why should they kill that market? Sure, maybe the future A6 and A7 will have huge advantages in power utilization, but it’s also clear Intel isn’t going to stop making their chips more and more power efficient. I suppose a lot of possibilities are on the table, but that doesn’t mean you can predict Apple is going to go into any particular direction. This is one company that has a habit of confounding the experts time and time again.

So it all boils down to this: If Apple can see a strategic reason to merge operating systems and to switch processors, it will happen some day. But Apple isn’t apt to want to force developers to switch gears all over again in the very near future.

Now when Lion’s successor arrives, perhaps two years from now, maybe things will change. iPad sales and how the Mac is doing at the time may be determining factors. But, as always with Apple, prepare to be surprised and maybe amazed.

Just this weekend, I got a letter from someone suggesting Apple shareholders should be staging a revolt because of the departure of Steve Jobs as CEO. Somehow, even though the company has prospered for the past nine months since Jobs first went on his latest leave, Apple is poised for a huge fall. You heard it first, I suppose.

When I reminded the author of that letter that Jobs remains an Apple employee, and serves as Chairman of the Board, I received no response. But I didn’t expect any. The current impression conveyed in many of the stores you’ve probably read is that Jobs is no longer at Apple, when, in fact, he has simply reduced his work load. That doesn’t mean he cannot continue to plot product strategy, and make final pronouncements on new Apple gear. It merely means he doesn’t have to concentrate on the day-to-day matters that also occupy a CEO’s attention, but may have little or nothing to do with making great products.

That doesn’t mean Jobs isn’t seriously ill. All indications are that he continues to fight his various ailments, the nature of which remain fodder for rumors. Some assume, since it’s now eight years since his pancreatic cancer condition was first diagnosed, that he might be living on borrowed time, and every single day of reasonable health is a blessing. I wouldn’t assume otherwise, but seriously ill people can often survive for many years with proper rest and treatment. It may also be that Jobs has been urged by his physicians to take it easy and let others do the heavy lifting at Apple, so he can concentrate on regaining his strength, or to prolong his life. Saying yay or nay to a new product or service may be all he can do, but it’s probably enough, and it’s too early to write his obituary.

There’s also that occasional claim that Apple’s creativity must have existed only in the brain of Steve Jobs, and otherwise is fated to vanish soon. One commentator has already ditched his Apple gear in exchange for inferior replacements expecting, I suppose, that putting someone else in the CEO’s chair will somehow make those products less compelling. If it doesn’t make any sense to you, no problem. It doesn’t seem terribly logical to me either, but the commentator in question has been known to pull stunts of this sort before, evidently to bring traffic to his blog. But I’m not going to help, so he will not be named.

There’s also the assumption that OS X Lion is seriously flawed, and Mac users are complaining loudly. While there are the usual initial release bugs to be reported, it doesn’t seem that the issues are any more serious than on previous OS X versions. As reported in this past weekend’s newsletter, the Lion adoption curve is steep. It doesn’t seem that loads and loads of Mac users are passing it by, or just wiping their drives and reverting to, say, Snow Leopard. Perhaps we’ll know more about the number of Lion upgraders in October, when Apple’s next financial report is due.

Meanwhile, the onslaught of alleged iPad killers appears to have slowed. Android OS tablets haven’t caught on, and Apple continues to secure legal victories against Samsung over Android gear. All eyes are now focused on Amazon, and whether the online sales giant has the chops to build a credible contender to the iPad, although it will also feature the Android OS. Certainly the Kindle has done very well for people who only want a dedicated e-book reading gadget. Whether Amazon can deliver a full-fledged tablet is another issue entirely, and if the OS is no better than the one used on products that have already failed in the marketplace, why should it be any different? We’ll, I suppose that Amazon expects to strike gold from sales to the existing Kindle user base. We’ll have to see.

Insofar as the iPhone is concerned, hardly a week passes without one or more announcements about new Android smartphones. You have to wonder whether some of these companies hope to succeed by confusing customers with so many products with relatively similar features that you can’t tell which way is up. The rush to the bottom continues, meaning you can get many Android handsets for next to nothing with your next wireless contract. It may be that Apple is going to make a move in that direction too with the next iPhone. Even though the 2009 iPhone 3GS serves the low-end now, there may be an official contender before long, perhaps something called the iPhone 4s, with simpler, cheaper internal parts, and less storage space. This is the sort of product that may suit in the so-called postpaid market, where people buy the phone at full price without the carrier subsidy. High-end smartphones are out of the range of most customers, but if Apple can sell you an iPhone in the $200-$300 range, it’s possible they’ll move an awful lot of product in countries where the carriers don’t always offer subsidized deals. But remember the existence of an iPhone 4s remains speculation and little more.

I expect the answers will come in October, as predicted. The rumor mills are rife with reports that production of new iPhones has already begun, and one carrier in Germany is already taking preorders, although the official name, specs and prices have yet to be revealed. So much for Apple being on the skids.