Probably because functionality is what counts. who cares how you get there? and one of the upsides of Android having open development is that features will get built in more rapidly via third parties.
"So you have hardware accelerated video filters? Well look at what I can fetch, hack and compile my Gentoo into.."
I'm not saying Android is bad, but this znet post is just stupid, sorry. Apple has never really been a big inventor of new technologies (apart from industrial design), but integrating existing ideas as good as possible. Some people prefer to tinker on their smartphones, some people like me get enough tinkering on their desktop PC and like their notebooks and smartphones to "just work" (quoted because it's actually not always like that with Apple products anymore, but at least their iOS devices are pretty solid in what they do).
Personally, I consider the iPad and iPhone way more than just industrial design.
People care "how they get there" when the phone they purchased a month ago can't run a cool new app because the manufacturer or their network provider decided they should be using a 2 year old version of android and that upgrades are not allowed.