Unfortunately, Apple has to attend to the lion's share (no pun intended) of its customer base - Joe User. This trend exemplifies their recognition of the "halo effect" iDevices are doing for the Mac - in other words, they are going to capitalize on iPhone, iPods, & iPads acting as a "gateway drug" to Mac computers.
Many of us here don't get it because we're the other way around - using Macs way before iDevices. We see them as a logical complement to the systems we already own. Sadly, we are now the minority.
Apple's UI design has always provided multiple paths to accomplishing the same goal. I told a buddy of mine that the reason Apple names their OS's after cats is because there is more than one way to skin them. This philosophy has not changed with Mountain Lion. Sure the first glance method is geared towards those who got here via iDevices, but the other methods still exist. Hell, you can do pretty much anything you want from Terminal if you have a command line bent. It's always faster to issue a chmod command on a whole subdirectory of files that go through the UI to alter security on said files. You can't get more pro than that. I know, I've been doing IT for 27 years.