From my perspective there seems to be a very clear purpose: unifying the interface across platforms, which is one of the disadvantages they had when compared to Apple.
I think it's quite the opposite. OS X has a very different interface from iOS. Some of the visual styling is similar, but for the most part the similarity ends there. Everything with any meat on it - the basic shell interface, the user interface controls and their behavior, even the machine's basic capabilities - is markedly different between the two platforms.
That's part of why iOS started eating up WinCE's market share when it came out. WinCE tried too hard to be like Windows and its user experience suffered as a result. A bicycle and a motorcycle serve fundamentally similar purposes. But I think we can all agree that it would be wrong to jump from that observation to the conclusion that it would be a good idea for them to have the same controls.
I think it's quite the opposite. OS X has a very different interface from iOS. Some of the visual styling is similar, but for the most part the similarity ends there. Everything with any meat on it - the basic shell interface, the user interface controls and their behavior, even the machine's basic capabilities - is markedly different between the two platforms.
That's part of why iOS started eating up WinCE's market share when it came out. WinCE tried too hard to be like Windows and its user experience suffered as a result. A bicycle and a motorcycle serve fundamentally similar purposes. But I think we can all agree that it would be wrong to jump from that observation to the conclusion that it would be a good idea for them to have the same controls.