The issue is that things work totally differently. AirDrop for the Mac works via multi-association wifi, which takes a decent amount of power. That is less noticeable on a device with a large battery, and Apple designed the UI in such a way that it only turns on when sharing is occurring.
On iOS it still uses multi-association wifi for the actual sharing, but it uses Bluetooth LE for the discovery. That allows it to be active at all times, which is very important given that on iOS most of the time AirDrop will be initiated while the app receiving the drop is completely inactive. The problem is that if Apple were to move Mavericks over to Blue LE discovery it would impact backward compatibility with existing AirDrop to Macs running older OSes, and it would have issues since some Macs that support AirDrop don't have Bluetooth LE compatible hardware. Not to mention you would have a lot more (and more confusing) use cases to deal with in the UI.
I expect them to move Mac OS over to iOS compatible AirDrop eventually, but it is not just a simple oversight. It is going to have to be a transition that has some thought put into it.
On iOS it still uses multi-association wifi for the actual sharing, but it uses Bluetooth LE for the discovery. That allows it to be active at all times, which is very important given that on iOS most of the time AirDrop will be initiated while the app receiving the drop is completely inactive.
Just tested this, and my iPad doesn't show up until I open the "control panel". Still it'll save battery by using only bluetooth for the initial scan.
On iOS it still uses multi-association wifi for the actual sharing, but it uses Bluetooth LE for the discovery. That allows it to be active at all times, which is very important given that on iOS most of the time AirDrop will be initiated while the app receiving the drop is completely inactive. The problem is that if Apple were to move Mavericks over to Blue LE discovery it would impact backward compatibility with existing AirDrop to Macs running older OSes, and it would have issues since some Macs that support AirDrop don't have Bluetooth LE compatible hardware. Not to mention you would have a lot more (and more confusing) use cases to deal with in the UI.
I expect them to move Mac OS over to iOS compatible AirDrop eventually, but it is not just a simple oversight. It is going to have to be a transition that has some thought put into it.