"Granted, I still won't "have" to use Twitter, but I'm going to be forced to see it all over."
so you have the dev seed? Can you tell me where "all over" is because I've only seen a twitter button as an option in the share menu of Safari, and I've been running 10.8 since it was released. It's integrated in iOS5 - AFAIK, I've only seen it in settings.
You think Apple's going to ruin their interface with 3rd party icons.. just like the "Intel Inside" stickers splattered all over their machines.. or all the bloatware that ships with OSX.. oh, and don't get me started on the ATT and Verizon crapware on iphones....
you will not see Twitter's icon in OSX unless you look for it.