That pretty much covers it right there.  Why do "they" (not sure who "they" are though) keep deprecating all the slick useful things and sticking us with "replacements" that take 10 times the code to make them do what you want?  Seems like the goal is to take away simple classes with lots of useful methods and stick us with massively complex (internally) classes that only have a couple ways to interface (which of course are done exactly the way you DON'T want it to be done).  Argh.

 OK, I'm better now.  Rant mode OFF!  :)