I don't see what's so hard to understand about this, apart from the fact that people seem to want to comment on Android based on third-hand talking points rather than their own experience.
Your girlfriend, if she had bought the same phone as me, from the same vendor, would still be on Android 2.1 but without her having to do anything (apart from possibly agree to some updates when prompted on the phone) she would have the latest versions of apps such Google Maps (only requires Android 1.6 and up) which was better than iOS Maps when the phone was sold, and is still better than iOS Maps in the very latest iOS 5. It has many new features like offline maps, Google location integration, 3D vector maps etc. and she can look forward to more being added.
Meanwhile, if she'd bought a 3G (which has near identical hardware) she'd have had to plug her iPhone into a computer, updated iTunes, and then updated the iPhone to get iOS 3 after a year. She'd have had to do this again to get iOS 4, which would have nearly bricked her phone due to it's lack of speed (despite not actually providing many of the actual features of iOS 4). She could then partially fix this by updating iTunes and the iPhone again after a few point updates were released and then would no longer receive any updates to anything Apple considers part of the OS.
Both systems have ups and downs (e.g. I'm surprised that the Android browser isn't something that's updated independently as you'd think that would fit Google's goals very well, but I assume there's technical issues I don't understand). A fixation on the version number of the OS, or false stereotypes about Android and iOS, obscures all of this.
Finally, the point about the JIT (which I realise I wasn't clear about) is that it only provides benefit if the phone has sufficient RAM. Random people on Android forums would naturally assume newer=better and be disappointed that they didn't have the new shiny, but my phone was somewhat unique in having a large amount of RAM (relative to the rest of the hardware specs anyway). It's therefore a good example of people feeling like they're missing out on something, that would actually hurt their performance if they got it.
Your girlfriend, if she had bought the same phone as me, from the same vendor, would still be on Android 2.1 but without her having to do anything (apart from possibly agree to some updates when prompted on the phone) she would have the latest versions of apps such Google Maps (only requires Android 1.6 and up) which was better than iOS Maps when the phone was sold, and is still better than iOS Maps in the very latest iOS 5. It has many new features like offline maps, Google location integration, 3D vector maps etc. and she can look forward to more being added.
Meanwhile, if she'd bought a 3G (which has near identical hardware) she'd have had to plug her iPhone into a computer, updated iTunes, and then updated the iPhone to get iOS 3 after a year. She'd have had to do this again to get iOS 4, which would have nearly bricked her phone due to it's lack of speed (despite not actually providing many of the actual features of iOS 4). She could then partially fix this by updating iTunes and the iPhone again after a few point updates were released and then would no longer receive any updates to anything Apple considers part of the OS.
Both systems have ups and downs (e.g. I'm surprised that the Android browser isn't something that's updated independently as you'd think that would fit Google's goals very well, but I assume there's technical issues I don't understand). A fixation on the version number of the OS, or false stereotypes about Android and iOS, obscures all of this.
Finally, the point about the JIT (which I realise I wasn't clear about) is that it only provides benefit if the phone has sufficient RAM. Random people on Android forums would naturally assume newer=better and be disappointed that they didn't have the new shiny, but my phone was somewhat unique in having a large amount of RAM (relative to the rest of the hardware specs anyway). It's therefore a good example of people feeling like they're missing out on something, that would actually hurt their performance if they got it.