When you work with a Diecemila or similar simple design, it strikes me that you can be in little doubt that what you are dealing with is in fact microcontroller. And personally, I have no problem with that at all -- I think it's great, in fact! But my suspicion is that I may be on a complete different page there to Massimo and where Arduino may be heading.
Yes, the official Arduino product line is going in way too many directions for my tastes, but if they think there is a market and a need then who am I to poo poo their marketing strategy?
As long as they don't forget their roots and still continue to support the older original designs in the current IDE release then there is really little to fear for the users.
Lefty