Most don't fully get it or see the importance, but that doesn't matter either because they will easily get the fact that Android devices deliver a lot more value for the dollar and have a lot more good quality free stuff.
That's a matter of opinion.
I went from Palm to Windows Mobile to Apple to PalmOS to Android. Apple absolutely delivers the best experience, followed by PalmOS, then Android.
I hated Android. Seriously, with a passion. I loved the idea--a modern, open-source phone where I could install anything I wanted. In practice, I never found anything worth installing that wasn't in the market, the free apps were all ad-laden (taking up valuable screen real estate and slowing things down), the source was incomplete (drivers) and the phone vendor tried to lock the phone (and claimed that overriding it would void the warranty.) I couldn't even find paid versions of some classes of app that I wanted in order to avoid the ads because free apps are a race-to-the-bottom (on both platforms.) Paid apps seemingly have a hard time competing when there's any free version out there that isn't just a demo. The scrolling was horrible--I felt like I was using gestures to perform unrelated actions rather than directly controlling the on-screen elements. This probably sounds like a minor gripe, but UX is a rather important part of any design. I understand most of the UX is fixed in ICS. Maybe I'll give it a shot when my contract is up. Probably not, though--I'm practically locked into the ecosystem such that I the cost/benefit skews more in Apple's favor.
Regardless, due to the customizations, philosophical differences between vendors, and varying degrees of carrier influence, it's really not fair to compare Apples to Androids. You really need to compare specific phones (and specific OS versions). You might say Android is better, but I could show you phones being sold in stores today which offer a vastly worse experience and are as locked down as the phones being sold by Apple today. At the top end (best Android phone in all categories compared to best iPhone), things get tighter, but the price also get closer, if not exactly the same (16GB GS3 and the 16GB iPhone 4s cost the same.)