It's not about the hardware. It really isn't. Software optimization and efficiency is far more important; Apple has known this for years, and consistently outperformed higher-spec products as a result.
Why on earth would Motorola release the Xoom knowing less than a month later, a critical OS update was available? Because to me, that seems to be a surefire way to piss off anyone who was excited enough about your product to actually buy it. But instead, they just took people's money and gave them something crap, and something they could only buy with a data plan, for several hundred more than the arguably superior iPad 2. And they didn't even give them all the stuff they promised. All of which screams 'we can't actually deliver what we said we would, but we'll still take your money'. Which I imagine will sour an awful lot of people on the Xoom, which means down the road, people are going to either buy more iPad 2s or Android tablets that aren't the Xoom. This also further proves that when a company assembles its own product with its own software, the results are almost inevitably better than a company who just writes software for dozens of different devices.
So the new Xoom release is going to have Flash. And eventually 4G. And eventually an SD slot. Who really cares? 4G is useable in all of ten cities in North America. Oh, and the SD slot's real genius, considering the thing has a 32 GB hard drive but can't actually connect via USB. GREAT design there, Motorola. As for Flash? Ever stop to think that the reason these companies keep pushing back their Flash support for tablets is because they've realized that, as of right now, Steve Jobs was right? Flash doesn't work well on these devices, and kills the battery while taking up too much RAM. So no, the Android users can't have it yet, BUT it'll be here soon. We promise. Remember, we made good the last time we told you we'd do something... right?
If Android wants to beat Apple at something, they need to actually invent something new, not sponsor inferior versions of what Apple did.