It's about time...
As a pilot, my company issued me an ipad so we could have our electronic publications (approach plates, departure procedures, and enroute charts) available ALL the time...kind of hard to takeoff/land the airplane when you have to turn off your device below 10,000 ft!
And that i already approved by the FAA!
So, yes, it is silly to say that electronics can't be used.
However, I can attest through personal experience (when someone forgot to turn off their cell phone...not me honest
) that cell phones DO interfere with some of the aircraft systems. Most noticeably the radios start cutting out and you get weird beeping sounds on the frequency. I haven't seen the heading bug start spinning or the aircraft start a descent uncontrolled because of it, but you never know exactly what the effects are.
One or two cell-phones/ 3G/4G devices not turned off...probabaly not a big deal....100 of them, could cause issues. So how does the flight attendant make sure everyone has their devices tuned to "airplane mode"?? Especially when it's obvious that some people *cough*usuallee*cough* don't bother following the rules that are there...because they don't think they should have to.
It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.