I'll admit I am not a good pick when it comes to computer semantics, so I might be mistaken.

Trying to be an "app" or not: For me, it is about the courtesy of respecting my main OS settings. It is about introducing accessibility concerns by overriding system settings such as demonstrated in this active bug report from 2008: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=92

> They aren't going to, and shouldn't, waste their time

It looks like they are going to, and really should fix this bug report. Improving the usability, interoperability and accessibility of your "app" or "operating system" is not a waste of time. You'd have a hard time backing that up.