There is your theory... what they did is actually change that paradigm of giving out what players want AND I disagree with that at a fundamental level it was more Mearles not understanding 4e and wanting his traditional DM domination instead.
I expect new players will be getting an axe when they wanted a sword.
That's not really 4e's paradigm in the first place. The paradigm is that DMs and players should all be having fun — and a *possible* way to accomplish that is by having players list items that they find interesting and exciting and then have the DM place some of them for the PCs to find. And you shouldn't do something like give a player who wants a sword an axe, simply because they'll likely just sell it or disenchant it or enchant it into sword form.
i.e. people like to think 4e said the players should get the items they want, but it doesn't actually say that. A lot of 4e's advice is about how to make things more fun and it gives suggestions about how to resolve conflicts before they happen rather than afterwards — a DM can feel free to set house rules and say, "There are no X in my world. Period" and then there aren't any.
But it is a lot better to sit down and talk with the players and say, "Oh, there are no divine PCs in my game because all the gods are dead on Athas." and one player might say, "Oh, could I have some sort of divine spark hidden in me?" and you might say, "I'd really prefer you pick one of the non-divine PCs because the gods are really, really dead." or you could say, "That seems interesting — let's talk about what that means..."
Similarly, it suggests magic items in a wish list so if someone is doing a build that requires X to work, there's no sudden surprise about it 5 levels in. Your player tells you what they would find interesting and then you can look and go, "Hey, that's a lot of cold specialized stuff..." and then they tell you, "Oh yeah, I wanted to do X and I can only do it with a frost weapon..." And you find that out again then rather than 5 levels later — so you can then realize,'Hey that guy is going to do a lot more damage than that guy. Maybe I need to do something about it...'