Somewhat of a canard there. Both products are essentially the same. The only diff that I can see is that one has WMP and the other doesn't. Downloading WMP (if it is free) or providing a free disk with it upon request doesn't sound like a terribly big deal to me.
The same goes for 3rd-party apps as well. This whole fiasco with MS and the EC was just stupid, in my opinion. If a custerom wants another media player, he/she just has to DL one.
I greatly prefer OSes that are more modular than Windows, however, so that I can choose whether or not to allow a particular app to take up disk space. The whole "(whatever app) is essential to Windows and is highly integrated" argument is stupid as well. However, I now have a choice in which OS to use, while the EC decision was not about choices, but about power.