One of the power toys was a scientific calculator with a graphing function. In that case, it makes perfect sense to not include. They would have had to spend money to put it through their normal QC'ing. Who would pay money for that? Those of us who would want such a thing would probably get another, better program unlike with WMP.
The cube shouldn't present any more security risks than any other program, and it would help sell the product. This is a feature most people could use. There are two features, that if implemented, I would switch back to Windows. One is multiple desktops. The other is what is called Exposee in OS X (scaling in Compiz, which I feel is a lousy, misleading name). These two things make managing windows much easier.
I'm sure at some point Microsoft thinks that since they have the mammoth's share of the personal OS market, they don't have to change too much, but from what I'm seeing, they are losing the next generation of computer users. If you look around campus here, you will see that about 20% of the students use Macs. I'm not studying art, but rather mathematics. I spent a lot of time on campus when I was in highschool and middle school since my mother works there and can say that this is a significant increase. I acknoledge that my sample population is both specific and small, but you (fohfoh) who have stock in Apple should know that their business is picking up, as you have said in other posts.