Hello,
First of all sorry for opening and old thread. 
@Jeff I think your tone comes off a lot stronger than you intend it to.
Let me qualify my background. I have worked in technical support for over 25 years and have shot digital since the Nikon cp950. Five years working directly with high-end photography software and photo labs across the country.
What is good for your workflow may not be good for mine, and software is upposed to be flexible enough to allow both. Seeing the option sitting there annoys me a bit more becaues it was intentionally disabled. They could let us unlock the button with a disclaimer. I've NEVER had an import fail (knock knock). I only use Sandisk Extreme IV cards with a highspeed reader and my last two cameras have had dual card writing abilities.
A simple (easy to automate) check for incremental filenames can also verify any missing images and even by metadata if you reset your file count for each shoot. Software can easily verify a transfer before, during, and after it is performed. The auto import feature failed horribly. I also don't want ANY more of Adobe's nanny (TSR) applications running in the background. Beyond that I have a reliable enough method to recover mistakenly deleted images from my SD cards even after a format.
I happen to agree that formatting in camera regularly is a good idea. I use Sony, Canon, and Nikon gear and they each like to write extra files to the cards and have different operating systems. My Sony is particularly finicky when sharing SD cards.