[jrockway]

Users don't care about why something is slow or broken (from their perspective).

This cuts both ways. An iPhone user doesn't care why Apple rejects good apps from the app store. An iPhone user doesn't care why his phone can't vibrate when someone uses his name in a tweet or pings him on IRC or talks to him via GTalk. An iPhone user doesn't care why his phone can't turn its ringer off during appointments, and set it to "ultra loud" when he is in his house.

Sure, Apple has technical explanations for all these things, but it doesn't make them go away.

It is all a matter, right now, of trading one set of problems for another. "Is iTunes sync worth not having Google Voice?", and so on.

Nobody is claiming Android is perfect, but it is important the keep in mind that Apple is not either.

[unalone]

Nobody thinks Apple is perfect. The people John Gruber named are all people who are huge in the Apple world but quit the iPhone in protest. John Gruber himself blasts Apple harder and more accurately than most Apple critics.

This whole "Apple is perfect" thing is a straw man that I've seen many times before. The argument isn't that Apple's perfect. The argument's that Apple is really, really, really good, and that its competitors' products aren't as polished as its own products. Android's advantages, as you highlight here, are certainly appealing to some people, but not to mass consumers, who care more about smooth than they do about extensible.