Let's keep some perspective here. Apple holds a minority share of the market. One might argue that the money is on the Apple platform. That leads to the questio

Let's keep some perspective here. Apple holds a minority share of the market. One might argue that the money is on the Apple platform. That leads to the question of why? Maybe it's because Apple's carefully curated experience attracts customers who have a large intersection with the group of customers who are willing to spend money. If we accept that premise, then what's "right" is what builds that user base. You have to take the bad with the good. I sound like a broken record at this point, but there is plenty of history surrounding apps that act as launchers. That singular feature represents a huge overlap with the primary role of the home screen, and the App Store Guidelines clearly spell out that this is a no-no. Widgets are a new case, because they're not full fledged apps. A widget could not "create an alternate desktop/home screen environment" because it is only a small part of a greater environment itself (Notification Center). However, the intent of guideline 10.4 is pretty clear. Apple wants to control the means by which users launch applications. That goal serves what Apple believes to be the best interest of users. You can disagree with that, but it's not your platform, and you haven't (yet) built a platform upon which millions of dollars are transacted in app purchases every year. What I'm saying is that Apple isn't exactly clubbing seals here. They're doing what they believe to be best for their platform, and they're doing it in a way that is pretty consistent with past behavior.