The situation with electronics on planes reminds me of trivial little middle school student handbook rules -- there were annoying kids who flaunted the rules To Be Different, annoying kids who proudly complied with the rules To Protect School Safety, annoying instructors who enforced the rules To The Letter (in retrospect, maybe they just needed an excuse to maintain discipline in the classroom), and a vast majority of consumers who barely noticed anything was going on and who forgot entirely about the pointlessness of the system as soon as it stopped affecting them.

With a system like that, there's absolutely no incentive for the frivolous rules to go away, and I doubt they ever will.