To be fair, there's quite a bit of 3rd-party development for the Blackberry
OS, but not nearly as much as thre is for Windows Mobile.

I see your point, but that's YOUR inference.  When there's only one task or
e-mail, it still reports "1 unread e-mail" or "1 Active Task" rather than
list the actual contents of the e-mail or task.  This in itself tells you
the Appointments plug-in acts differently than the others, for good or bad.

This is the way it's been as long as there have been PPCs.  If it were a
"gaffe" rather than an intended design issue, SOMEONE might have noticed it
since "the gaffe" surfaced in April 2000!  ;-)

Again, my guess is that a visual display of where you needed to be next was
likely deemed more useful than "6 appointments today."

Perhaps, but there's always a balance- each user has a different list of
features that are critical to them, and will see everything else as
"bloat."  I'll wager my "bloat" is different than yours!

True.  This is a pet peeve of mine as well, but it seems to be a MS mindset-
their Zune portable media players are also "invisible" to a PC's file
system and can only be read/written to with the Zune sync software.

Yep.  There are a bunch of workarounds- programs you can install on a PPC
to simulate a USB Mass Storage device, or, my preferred solution- the PPC
File Explorer can access network shares, so you can transfer files back and
forth from PPC to PC over WiFi.

Again, you assume these shortcomings are "gaffes" or "oversights" rather
than intentional design decisions.  Again, while I don't always agree with
the decisions, they are intentional.

Furthermore, if you investigate how the device works (i.e. RTFM) this is
explained- no "inferences" are necessary.  In any ca e, now that you know
how this "gaffe" operates, you can either adapt to it to find a
workaround/replacement app.

I'd say darn near all, at least until recently.  Back when PPCs were mostly
business/enterprise devices Activesync was simply a necessary component of
syncing PIM data and file transfer.  However, as more WM phone-based
devices fall into the hands of non-business users, I see a number of people
who don't bother with Activesync (just as they never synched/connected
their former "dumbphones" despite the fact that the ability to do it was
available.)

While I can't speak for the designers, I assume the idea was
simplicity/protection.  From the start, the concept was that these devices
were "PC Companions" designed to portably carry your most useful/important
data with you.  The idea was (is) that dropped the device in it's cradle,
and it automagically synced data WITHOUT user decisions or intervention-
your PIM data, files, even media just updates without you having to worry
about copying the 3rd-quarter sales report from the device's Excel
subfolder to the desktop.  Hence, UMS (USB Mass Storage) was probably not
only considered unnecessary, but actually more "dangerous" since manually
cutting and pasting files might lead to more mishaps (i.e. copying an older
file over a newer one, etc.) not to mention more complicated since the
likelihood is that you'd manually have to toggle between UMS and sync modes
(like you have to do now to switch WM phones between Activesync mode and
PAM ("Phone as Modem") mode to use the phone's internet connect from a PC.

Maybe we need a different version of the OS for power users- leave a more
restricted "WM Professional" for the corporate types and a new "WM
Technical" for we geeks!  ;-)

Personally my biggest beef with WM from day 1 (well, day 2- on "day 1" I
was still reading the manuals and trying to decide whether to use the
"Windows CE Services 2.11" disc my Casio E-100 came with, or to try the
"new" Activesync 3.0 download from MS, but I digress...) is the whole "PC
Companion" concept.  Today's WM devices are mini-computers in their own
right (I still have an old Toshiba Tecra Win95 laptop with less memory,
storage, and a slower clock-speed than the PHONE I'm keying-in this reply
on!), yet WM devices are still designed as if they're desperate to jack
into the nearest PC to get anything done.  

Thankfully most of the shortcomings are addressed via 3rd party utilities,
but given the raw power of these devices, it seems odd that you can't, for
example, rename a file extension or edit a shortcut with the built-in
utilities.

But again, compared with other mobile platforms (Palm OS, iPhone) it's
actually amazing what tools ARE included that can potentially bugger-up
your device completely.  There are probably a half-dozen things I dowith
File Explorer alone that would force me to hard-reset to recover from.
It's hard to imagine RIM, Appleor Nokia giving me that type of power to use
(or abuse!)  While I don't agree with everything, I can understand and
appreciate the tightwalk between useability, simplicity and security the
designers have to walk.  Unfortunately, the old adage that "if you try and
please everybody, you end up pleasing nobody" is probably true of many of
the decisions made.

It's easy to paint the designers as out-of-touch or incompetent when you
see "obvious flaws" but look at it from the idea of making the device as
usable, yet as malleable as possible, and it makes more sense.  Take your
Today/Calendar example- while you are complaining that "6 upcoming
appointments" is better for you than "Dentist 9:40", I'd argue that
"Dentist 9:40" is far more useful- I can tell at a glance without launching
the calendar app that by 9:45, I'll need to be sitting in an uncomfortable
chair while my own personal Lawrence Olivier asks me "Is it safe?" before
lnflicting his professionally-trained, sadistic horrors upon me...  ;-)