- click a button on my desktop web browser and have the current page appear on my phone
- flash a totally new ROM onto my phone
- give apps root access and let them directly access hardware
etc. etc. I agree that iOS has far more app capability, but Android has far more OS-level capability to take advantage of.
2 and 3 are theoretical ways to let software do more that are no more available to Android end-users than Jailbreaking is available to iOS users.
You've basically confirmed my point. Android's ability to 'do more' is theoretical.
Given that there are lots of things that everyday users want to do that come to Android much later, I just don't see a valid argument here.
"App Capacity" is what lets people do things.
* develop an app on my own machine - you can't develop iOS on anything but AAPL hardware, android dev can be done on the big 3.
* without having to pay anything - how much does dev license in iOS cost? don't need to pay for android SDK and tools
* without having to jump through any loops to distribute it - I can just pack up the .apk and email it to you, provide a dropbox public link (when I used to use k9mail, I got my updates at http://code.google.com/p/k9mail/downloads/list rather than the android app store), or put it up in my own app store for it (look at amazon app store, or http://f-droid.org/, or that adult themed one that came out some time ago).
Right now the only thing I'd really miss if I went back to an iPhone is the navigation. The GMail integration is pretty sweet on the Android too, but maybe that's improved on iOS since I jumped ship last year.
"OS-level capabilities" empower a handful of developers/hackers/etc..