Yeah, you know how likely it is that SUSE will switch to the Debian packaging system... There's no way to get around it: I know for a fact that they've designed them in this way because developers like being able to get wide collaboration and benefiting the most amount of people.

You quite palpably haven't read the article, or seen the screencast. USB images are not new at all. This is about a new user being able to easily roll any image (USB, VMware, installable live CD) with all the packages that they want (from any repositories) and all the configurations/files they want, all conveniently from a web interface. It's quite innovative and revolutionary.

Indeed, it is actually designed to be friendly for other distributions as well. Both the build service and KIWI (both GPL) intentionally have generic designs so that you can both build packages for other distributions, and build customisable versions of other distributions, too. It's a really nice thing: when a distribution goes out of their way to ensure that others can benefit from the tools as well.

Well, it has many improvements not only for new users, but for experienced users too:

• Installation happens in 24 minutes now. In fact, on my computer it only took 18 minutes. This was not easy, it required a lot of work: switching to LZMA, creating images for the base patterns, and the new SAT solver (which benefit general package management too)
• Installer is less hassle. You only need something like 6 clicks for the full installation. Say what you want, but we were constantly getting abused about the "long" and many clicks required for the installation in public reviews.
• Installer is more pleasing to the eye. It's the first thing users see. Many new users were erroneously reaching the conclusion that "nothing changed" in openSUSE because we kept the installer the same. You would be very surprised about the psychological effect this had on users.
• Installation is indeed run once, but it also provides a make-or-break situation for users. If there was a part they couldn't do they're probably not going to be hanging around to work it out, they'll just try something else.

So, while there is evidently a lot more to it than just the change in aesthetic appeal, aesthetics are incredibly important in their own right, as well.