*SIGH*
Let me back your quote up a few decades, and put it in that context... "Someone at Apple should pick up a Dell computer. I bet they would be surprised its not molded out of a single slab of aircraft quality aluminum. But the damn thing can be opened up and you can put whatever components you want to inside, and it runs Windows and lets you do what you want with it. I'm an apple fanboy at heart, but if Apple continues to lag behind the competition (Dell, Acer, Gateway, HP), I'm going elsewhere with my $. Hats off to Jobs if he can change my mind."
Know what? Jobs didn't give a crap then, and I seriously doubt that Ives does now.
You do realize, don't you, that for decades now PC owners have been saying the same thing about Macs? Too expensive. Too many high-end materials. Too proprietary. Too restrictive and not "open" enough. All of which means that they're "lagging behind the competition"... Look - this is what Apple does. It's what they are. Here's the thing you need to hammer into your skull: They aren't nearly as concerned with "lagging behind" as they are with realizing the products they envision. That's what makes them unique and special.
I doubt that you're really "an apple fanboy at heart". If you were, you'd know that this has always been Apple's MO with all of their products. They control hardware and software for an end-to-end user experience that THEY define according to their own set of values. They design with high quality materials, and spend lots of cash and time on the look and feel itself. They try to make their products optimally usable and productive, without allowing so much user-customization ("letting the damn thing do whatever you want it to") that it degrades performance and stability. The opposite model is what the PC camp (vs the Mac camp) has always stood for. Many disparate manufacturers instead of a proprietary system, cheaper materials and designs for lower cost systems, user customizable to appeal to a larger market, etc..., etc... This is what has always distinguished PCs from Macs. iPods from myriad other MP3 players. Now, iPhones from Android phones. Those other camps are more about prioritizing sales and broader markets over actual products.
Apple doesn't do that. They leave it to the other model - in this case the Android model. Apple is more about the product itself first, and they're willing and prepared to accept a smaller market share in order to guarantee the product they want to produce. Save for when they got off track under John Scully (without Jobs), it's always been that way, and hopefully it always will be. The minute they change, use cheaper materials and designs, stop being proprietary, and let users decide how things work, they become the next Dell and HP. They are trying to preserve the Steve Jobs mantra - "People don't know what they want until we show it to them."
That said, lots of people value having control over their fonts and interfaces over the build-quality, etc... They like the PC/Android model over the Mac/iPhone model. That's fine. They have many products to choose from. They just shouldn't expect Apple to change their foundational model to become like all the rest.
Perfectly said!