Fully agreed. Having a nice set of standards and functionalities built-in right into the platform is a lot better than "There's an App for that". My N900 can browse FaceBook via the browser and utilize Skype and FB Chat straight from the Conversations tool so I have zero need for applications for either of those.

Moblin also has a promising history of this, integrating lots of social web services into their desktop.

Interestingly enough, Windows Phone 7 also seems to be going this "platform instead of apps" route with their Hubs concept.

I hope all of these developments will eventually enlighten the users of "App phones" to switch over