Well JimH,
that was already suggested months ago, in the early phases of MC9 Beta! The post is almost a repetition of a post of mine early this year! Nowadays users simply expect certain functionalities to follow "Microsoft Style Guide". Point!
It may be a limitation for the creative process in developping new products and expressing new ideas, but at the same time it is a great service offered by Microsoft to ease the way of handling the desktop. It might not always be the best way, but standards have never been optimum solutions, but good or best working ways for a vast majority of a population.
Despite those things that Microsoft imposes on third party developers, their is still a lot of creative freedom left for them.
And your product MC9 is the proof. It is better to sail in the same direction of the Microsoft boat than against it! We certainly do not want to go back to the old Unix days, where every software product had his own display, printer, font management, keyboard shortcuts, his own interface design etc.
When evaluating new software products, sometimes products with extremely innovative ideas for the human interface come up that are really interesting, but unless their functionality is not really far beyond than that of their competitors, most of the time I go for those that adhere most to the "Microsoft Style Guide"
The new AutoPlay V2 in XP is a really
strong feature and many big players make use of it (WinDVD and Roxio as examples). And it seems rather easy to implement!
Deciding not to use it is a source of unnecessary anger for many potential new users and a also a few old ones.
In other words: AutoPlay is the place, where the user has to make crucial decisions, which product to use to perform certain tasks! Not showing up on the dancing place might be fatal!