Identity, Registration and Activation of Non-Packaged Win32 Apps

So I've avoided UWP like the plague (no newer than WinForms or bust!) because it seems to me that it is merely the current SDK flavor of the week at Microsoft (after Silverlight, Metro apps, WinRT, XNA etc.) that'll be gone in a few years.

Am I correct in my reading that in the tug of war between Win32 style full system access and UWP style appification of programs on the desktop, this article represents the Win32 side getting a few winning steps towards its side, or is this more like EEE to get people locked in to UWP's identity features?

I'd love to hear opinions of people who have more UWP experience than myself (if you've written one more app than Hello World, that means you)