Well, ideally (if we're on the subject of users), a user shouldn't even have to consider root access, but, like I said, this is still an immature platform (and still a platform primarily intended for developers), and these issues are part of the growth.

I've done it in OS2007 and OS2008 from a bunch of different locations to several different people with NITs (for GTalk) and PCs (for Gizmo). I can't say that I ever had a problem with either, so, perhaps I am, but I'm simply speaking from experience.

I'm sorry, what? Flashless updates are literally a month away. The point is irrelevant now. I suppose if you want to complain about how long it took them to get there I'd understand, but that's just a little unproductive.

TA-t3 covered the basic technical issues pretty well in his post, but I'll expound further.

FAT doesn't support permissions, so to run executables off of a FAT partition you'd need to put together some sort of ugly hack—bad plan, that's out. The next option is to switch to a filesystem that supports permissions, so, basically, Ext2/3. Great, but, oops since Linux is the only platform supports Ext without extra work from the user, looks like all those poor Windows and Mac users wont be able to mount their card anymore.

Since we can unify the filesystem on the card, we partition it, right? OK, this could work, now we just have to partition the card, so, take your card, backup everything you need off of it, and put it back in. Good, now take it back out and put everything back on it. Oh, doesn't fit? Where did my 512MB go? Why can't I use that?

The consumer-usability point is an important one. What happens when the user removes their card (or swaps it out for another) and loses all their installed applications? Or the card dies? Or they want to take it out and plug it into their Windows (or OS X) machine and it asks to format it?

Point is, it's a non-trivial thing to do, both from a technical standpoint and from a user's point of view. It may seem simple, but it's not.