People that can be suckered by Apple's marketing... aren't interested to learn more about 'the magic' behind the curtain anyway. They use a different metric to make decisions on their computer/gadget/appliances purchase.
That don't bother me.. as long as people get what they expect out of their purchases and happy about it past the unboxing stage

Yes, it's really easy to get sidetracked in these days n age. Truly information overload everywhere we turn. But that's not what those researches were talking about either.

Yes, that's one of the main reason I jailbroke all my iphones. To background download tasks, maintain active ssh/vnc/rdp connections and listen to streamed audio. Luckily, the multitasking implemention in iOS4 supports background downloading and audio/voip streaming, among other things.

I think most knowledgeable people will attribute apple as successful in ui and form design, above technical revolutionaries.