I never recall the stock home screen being choppy on a stock Moto Droid. And I continued to use the stock Home because it was fast and smooth after I began switching to other roms that used the Helix1/2 launchers. Helix 2 is a lag fest. Android doesn't need a 1Ghz Snapdragon at all, and runs pretty well on the older 528Mhz Qualcomm chips in the Hero and G1. You just have to avoid the heavier applications on those slow devices. Individuals who complain about speed issues with stock devices, judging by several of my friends who own Droids, aren't familiar with app management. To them, there's nothing wrong with keeping a dozen apps running in the background, while at the same time complaining that phone is laggy. Close the apps, and the problem goes away.
On Moto's 2Ghz device, they'll release it, and a few months later HTC will follow with theirs, and then LG and Samsung will enter with their's, and then Moto will follow up with an even more powerful device. All before the iPhone 5 is even brought to market. The resources of a single company, Apple, cannot compete in the same league as open software. The iPhone 4 was obsolete before it was even brought to market, everyone knows this, even those who bought it. But, it is not hardware alone that sells the phone, the software has to pull its own weight. You could load the 2Ghz Moto up with Android 1.0 and people would be infuriated over it. Load it with Froyo or Gingerbread, and people will be ecstatic. Slap iPhone OS 1.0 on the iPhone 4, and the Apple fans would probably still proclaim it as the greatest device ever released. :/
I have a Milestone (GSM Droid) which for the longest time could not be overclocked. Helix was WAY faster than the stock home. And even then it was slightly choppy. LauncherPro solved all the problems, and with the new OC utility for the Milestone it's ok now.
Here's the problem though. When the Droid launched, you could use the Droid Eris which was an ARM11 528mhz phone next to it and you could see which launcher was smoother. The Droid was NOT optimized clearly, and somehow the older Eris was blazing fast. Even with 2.1 the Eris is even faster, and sometimes the Droid at stock 2.1 is kinda interesting to me why it's not completely smooth. When compared to the iPhone home screen it's night and day. Granted the new launchers like LauncherPro and ADW really solve things, but for the stock Home to be insufficient is annoying.
As for your point about app management, you shouldn't HAVE to use a task killer in Android. People shouldn't have to auto kill every few minutes to have a smooth experience. The fact is apps load into memory whether or not you use them or not. I have 2-3 twitter clients and while all but 1 have notifications and background updates disabled.. somehow they find themselves loaded into memory. Killing apps does speed things up a bit, but like I said, shouldn't the non enthusiast experience be smooth to begin with?
The thing is it's NOT about 2ghz devices or whatever. Your experience just has to be good. The iPhone 3GS experience is fine as it is. HTC unveiled the Hero and Droid Eris even well after Cortex A8 (BEFORE the iPhone 3GS) started making its way into devices, and those worked just fine. In the end it's just the experience that matters.
You claim the iPhone 4 is already outdated before it hits the market. Why? Because there's a 1ghz Nexus One? Because Moto may release a 2ghz Droid the next month? And so what if Moto does release a 2ghz Droid right now. What can it do that my 1ghz Droid can't do? What can an iPhone 3GS with a 4ghz processor do TODAY that it can't do right now on a Cortex A8?
Let's look at demanding software like the iPhone games. Not only do they LOOK better than the top Android games, they run pretty damn well. So you have software that looks better, runs well, has a total better experience, yet you're saying the iPhone is outdated because the raw specs of a N1 look better? But even with those raw specs, why don't we have the apps in the Android market to back it up? It's the whole package that counts. The iPhone 4 may be outdated if you want to talk about clock speed, but that's not all that matters in a phone. IT was NEVER about clock speed til phones started touting their CPUs.
The resources of a single company, Apple, cannot compete in the same league as open software
You have to see that Android and iOS have been progressing RAPIDLY in the past years. People seem to ahve forgotten how BAD the original iPhone OS was in terms of featureset. But one thing I think everyone has to admit is that Apple does release very polished featuresets. And everything seems complete. I know it does exclude certain features like it has in the past with multitasking and copy and paste, and while those were clearly missing features, for what it had, the iPhone was complete.
Android on the other hand has come to us with features, but you can tell the Market itself was not polished as well as the Apple App Store. You have nice features like copy and paste, but clearly no one though it through and how it should also work in the GMail app (really? Come on). It's almost like Google slaps things together and it's all rather sloppy. Each revision cleans things up a bit, but it's HTC with their Sense which really tidies things up, optimizes performance, and makes the OS usable, almost iPhone-esque in terms of refinement. I think Apple's doing just fine even if it's taking small steps at a time. At least I can say that each revision is a solid step that didn't have a major foulup.
And we all know Android isn't all that open either... the OS still makes decisions for you when you, the user should have that ability to close apps, open apps, etc. The same goes with multitasking.