> Presumably if publishers were actually pressuring Microsoft to make a child-safe device, they'd have come up with a more advanced protection mechanism than that.
They did. For the next generation. They updated their model of "child safe".
I think the rule is that when a technology crosses over to being a company-specific platform that doesn't have wide lease in the markets you work in, then it's a bad idea to use if you want to evade the specialization trap.
Like working on legacy codebases, the question isn't special knowledge of a technology, but whether or not the technology is in wide adoption and/or features high transfer to other technologies.
Those that were involved in birthing the current brands of radicalism grew up in the 70s and 60s. They are merely reaping the consequences of those beliefs.