Color me skeptical. I avoided upgrading to Lion for as long as work would allow me, and some of the things being heralded as improvements in 10.8 seem like steps backward, or sideways at best.

I agree with Matt's comments about things being more and more locked down, and I think it's about more than just philosophy -- these types of things have real, lasting effects. The introduction of "Gatekeeper" means that now if you're a smallish developer and you decide not to publish in the App Store, you're not only losing customers who've already decided that the App Store is the One True Place To Go To Buy Mac Apps, but that your software will also be marked as "unsafe" for many others who haven't made that decision yet, but also haven't changed from the system default of only trusting signed code. (Remember all of those other successful attempts to bring signed code to the desktop? Yeah, me neither.)

I get what they're aiming for, and if the App Store was *only* reviewing apps for malware, vulnerabilities, etc. I could understand. But to get this level of "safety", you are also giving them the power to reject applications for a wide variety of other reasons. The ends to not justify the means.

As for the other stuff, it looks like a mixed bag. The centralized notification thing could work -- I certainly have no love for Growl at this point after their decision to go App Store only, so seeing an alternative show up in the OS could be a nice plus. I have no use for most of the rest of the features they're trumpeting in their promotional materials, so I'm hoping for small tweaks and improvements, and as little iPad GUI creep as possible.