For what it's worth, the regions give me exactly what I need: customization of design without writing or altering code.

The 4.7 site that I'm working on has 7 regions, though some of them are not obvious from the presentation.

One of them is currently unused, 3 are left-rail, content, footer.

I also added 'login', 'header' (unused), 'inline', and 'right header'.

On this page: http://rubybaboon.com/taxonomy/term/20 it lets me:

 - put the login in the upper right
 - put Tagadelic's tag cloud next to my site logo
 - put the 'popularity' ranking (custom module) above the content (that's the inline block).

So I think the issue may be: many people don't need multiple regions.  Or it may be that people don't know how best to exploit them.  The hidden region I have would allow me to post a sitewide message at the top of all pages instantly.

In 4.6, I had to use flexiblock or use snippets.  No more.

- Ken Rickard
agentrickard