Remember that whole issue with the EULA change disregarding non-Objective C built applications (think Unity3D, Adobe AIR, PhoneGap, et al) because they didn't regard the proper OS calls - the ones they wouldn't let third party apps get to because they didn't want (and I'm adding my own commentary here) to take the time to grant those frameworks access to all of the API's, document those API's and then test access and success on those API's.

Anyway, I find Apple's QA restrictive because it allows them to avoid dealing with too many variables. Something that the N900 and so forth deal with differently and (honestly) way better than Apple.

Dunno. I have a lot of opinions, but not sure if any one system gets it more right than the other. Just go with the one that does what you want. Or, see if there's an alternative within that OS and hack/tweak/jailbreak as you see fit. That's what I did with my Android tablets (custom ROM's that gave me what I wanted), iOS phones (past tense) and jailbreak them to do what I wanted, N9 tweaks that added the functions I thought should have been there all along.

Again, my take. Apple could, but they seem lazy. Just like Microsoft in that regard. Capable OS's, but they limit it because that's easier.