$ operator is invalid for atomic vectors, returning NULL - what is the right thing to do then?

Dear all,
Starting from a recent version of R, the $ became "unusable" on atomic vectors, e.g.

x <- c(a=1,b=2)
x$a

NULL
Warning message:
In x$a : $ operator is invalid for atomic vectors, returning NULL
 
I can of course do

x['a']

- but that requires more typing (5 characters rather than 2). 
 
Apologies if I've missed a an announcement regarding this, but
1) Is there an alternative to the ['a'] and
2) Why was this change made?

There's an announcement in the NEWS file for 2.6.0

DEPRECATED & DEFUNCT

     o	$ on an atomic vector now gives a warning that it is 'invalid'.
	It remains deprecated, but may be removed in R >= 2.7.0.

and an update in R-devel saying that in fact it has been made defunct there.

In answer to your questions:

1) I don't think so, other than x[1].
2) I don't remember the details, other than it was to avoid confusion. 
Maybe someone else can summarize the discussion?

Duncan Murdoch