The thing is, Intel did really well for _years_ with just defining 
hardware interfaces. The PIIX IDE controller interfaces were a great 
success, and worked for over a decade. So here's a question for you:

  "After having done something successfully for a decade, what do you do?
   Do you
    (a) Try to emulate a known successful strategy?
    (b) Put a committee together to try to come up with a new and more 
        'generic' solution, since you were only successful for closer to 
        fifteen years."

Guess which one is ACPI.

		-- Linus Torvalds