Customizing the Home Screen Status Bar

I know right now that the ability to customize the home screen is more or less limited to the arrangement of the icons, right?
What I want is the ability to place a 'new mail' or 'new sms' icon at the top of the home screen, along the status bar where the time and signal strength are currently displayed.
That way I can see at a glance if I have new messages, even when the phone is locked, by hitting the unlock button at the top of the phone.
Luckily the SMS preview gives me that status, but I still need to manually unlock the phone with the passcode before I can see if I have any new email. I don't use an audible alert for incoming email.
I'd also prefer the option to have new sms messages neither display a preview nor even display a name on the home screen.
In short, I want more control over the behavior and display of the home screen. I've seen some rumblings that the Apple SDK disallows interaction with the home screen. If so, iPhone users are completely at the whim of Apple to include new home screen functionality.
I'm not happy with that arrangement.
Coming from the Windows Mobile word, I'm finding Apple to be a very closed system. I knew ahead of time that there would be some diminished flexibility, but I didn't expect this much of a drop.

Apparently you do not have a question, but it seems that you have some feedback for Apple. As this is a users forum, populated by iphone users -not Apple, perhaps you need the address for feedback that Apple does receive:
www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

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