I agree with you. It makes me fear a little that to get some hardware partners, they are throwing away some of the "unlike" solutions, to get more like the other OS. The status bar return is the best example here after months of explanations about why it is better to remove it and show it bigger when peeking, than a small one always taking spaces...
And the active covers being dumbed down to push buttons means there is no more reason to not switch back to full fledged widgets... Yes, it was faster to use the media player and launch app on symbian belle using widgets and homescreens, than it is on jolla. The pulley menu on the lockscreen was also something that fullfilled the widgets of my old symbian phone (light, silence mode, or the camera that had a dedicated button).
Removing all this means it is slowing down the user experience. If they don't replace it by something else, then we lose something.

Jaakko's answers to your remarks on twitter feels like he has the good ideas, but can apply them. If he continues to blog about good ideas, but Jolla does something else, this will not help as a lot of people's expectations won't be fulfilled...

We'll see what comes from this on the phone, and I still hope for improvements against current situation, but I am a bit worried right now.