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And now after we've sufficiently argued all of this, who wants to take bets that people will figure out ways to reliably install user-created widgets?

Keep in mind that there will be at least two different kinds of applications. Depending on what sort of DHTML / JavaScript support they provide in the browser, it might be possible to develop "limited" widgets that can be installed through the browser. That probably won't give you access to all the hardware's functionality, but it will get you a variety of things along the lines of stock tickers / weather gadgets / sports scores / etc.

You probably need a "native" app if you want to deal with the microphone, speaker, and the radios (beyond just making a TCP/IP connection to a web site somewhere). That's probably going to be Apple-and-friends only.