The ability to go onto the marketplace and download e.g. a battery monitor app that could display a number on the notification bar rather than the 5-state default was refreshing. I had to jailbreak by iPod Touch to get similar functionality. I similarly had to jailbreak it to disable auto-rotation; that's a default option in the N1. And the sense of freedom in being able to e.g. download Opera and replace the browser is refreshing. This is a device that doesn't necessarily need Google to improve it - competition can play its part too.
At this point you are in the far distant percentile of power/advanced/ideologically-inclined users, though. Obviously some people will care a great deal about the precise display of their battery status. But you have to recognize they are far fewer than the number of people who care about being able to do basic things with 3 fewer taps.
The best way I can think of to describe it is like a Mac vs PC, except with the Unix subsystem made completely locked-down on the Mac. PCs are just better and more productive machines for my way of approaching the world. It just feels more industrial-strength, more adult, less toy-like, at an emotional level that's very hard to express concisely.
No user (statistically) cares about GPL 1, 2 or 3 or the possibilities some modular design opens for either hardware or software developers. They care about the UI not sucking. At the end of the day, that's the gap Android has to bridge.
The first leads to the second. I would hack on Android if I could actually use my changes on my own phone, which I would be able to do if Android were GPL 3. If I could hack on Android, the UI would be better. Multiply that by 1000+ other people in a similar situations, and you can see that GPL 3 would lead to what users actually care about.
And yet, if they did the exact same thing they're doing now but weren't making a profit, I'm sure the vast majority of the people who are praising them now for "getting" the technology would excoriate them for "not getting" it.
Now your argument seems to be that regardless of what they do, profitability is no way related? They're profitable because they make products that people like and buy. If they weren't profitable it would because people don't like their products and don't buy them. I'd say that's rather significant.
I agree with the "buy" part: that's obviously necessary for them to be profitable. Not so sure about the "like" part.
There are many reasons to buy or not buy a product apart from liking it.
You could buy it because that's what's used at work, or because that's what all your friends have, or because they have a monopoly on interfacing with other products you need to use (like games, or photoshop, or tax or music software), or because that's what you've been using all along and it's just too much of a pain to switch, or just because the product is marketed so well that you feel the need to buy it without having any sort of clue as to whether you'll like after you've bought it (or any sort of clue as to how good the competition is).
But most of those are statistically insignificant or temporary. Apple has sold millions of iPhones, for example, year after year.
You sound like you are desperate to make a negative point about Apple without actually having something meaningful to add to the discussion.
As for not adding anything to the discussion, the same could be said about your own comments. Or you could also be accused of being "desperate to defend Apple".
But I wouldn't accuse you of that because I don't think that's a very constructive way of having a discussion.
Really? So you think the overriding reason that people buy a product has nothing to do with whether they like it? Because that's the argument you seem to be making. I'm not desperate to defend Apple, I'm desperate to defend logic and common sense.
Honestly, I have no idea what point you were trying to make on this little aside to my original comment.