It is more than just that,
the types of hardware they are scoping for have some very
convoluted power controls for doing stuff like
enabling/disabling/power-cycling/hibernating various
hardware bits. I hurt my head on the Bay Trail when I found out
what it does with the USB power, and some of the other bits.
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If your application does something like request (from background)
a device to "power on" that is presumed elsewhere to be dormant
you may end up with a segment of hardware going off into
an unanticipated power state when the device powers off
and somebody forgets to check all the circuit-breakers,
some of which are stored in non-volatile manners.
I have seen a powered-off Bay Trail drain its battery to zero.
Silently, and with no indication it was doing so, of course.
All because it had power control issues.
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I am sure Canonical has seen this kind of thing with its many
convolutions around building Touch for Android.
With a desktop system it is not as serious an issue
as it is on a tablet, somewhat less so for a laptop.