Hopefully, there has been some serious work done on iOS 7 and it'll probably address most of the OP's concerns.
However, I do hope they introduce none of these customization shenanigans. I don't care for widgets (nor do I want another icon or thing I cannot remove from my homescreen). If the base OS is sufficiently good UI-wise, there is no reason ever to need to customize its looks besides the wallpaper (e.g. OS X).
I disagree - widgets are enormously important to me, and were the deciding factor in my choosing an android phone. I'm quite forgetful, and I have a tendency to focus on one thing to the exclusion of others. Widgets allow me to display important information on my home screen that will be shown to me every time I look at the phone.
This means that I can have a list of (for example) upcoming birthdays on my phone that I see over and over again, enough that I will eventually see the reminder at a point when I am in a position to do something about it. Alarms are useless by comparison, because I will inevitably be busy with something else when they go off. Calendars/todo apps are equally useless to me, because they require me to remember to open up an app all the time.
I realise my use case is relatively niche, but I imagine there's a lot of different niche users out there that benefit from customisability.
I do the same thing. I have a birthday calendar and todo list on my home screen, it's immensely helpful. Even more so now that I can also have it on my lock screen.
But see, you have analyzed that you desperately needed some kind of birthday widget and that iOS didn't suit your particular needs. You switched over or went directly to Android. That's fine, you have an alternative and you seem happy with it.
However, I despise such things. I've analyzed that I wouldn't stand using Android for those reasons, and that I'm better off with iOS.
I go with Apple's motto: "there's an app for that".
That's absolutely fair enough - I love that there's a variety of options out there for everyone, and I'm never going to criticise someone for finding what works for them.
I guess my point was more about the statement that there's no need for customization if the OS is well-designed - to my mind, there may be no need for customization for many (or perhaps even a majority) of users, but there is for some. An OS that tried to serve all niche needs without allowing customization would likely be a confused mess - and yet, for those users, having their niche need served can be extremely important.
This is basically what I miss most from Android. My home screen was taken up largely by my upcoming calendar items. It was a nice ambient awareness of what I had coming up, with absolutely no effort on my part.
My understanding was that at least on the lock screen there was no easy way to distinguish between different calendars - I want birthday reminders to show up persistently for at least a week before the event, which is obviously undesirable for most other events.
If the lock screen gets/has that functionality, I'm not sure what the real difference between that and a widget is - except that mine displays on the home screen while yours displays on the lock screen.
And those things only work in cases where Apple has made special agreements. It's going to look silly when Facebook and Twitter are no longer things and iOS rushed to integrate them instead of just opening an API to enable it.
If the base OS is sufficiently good UI-wise, there is no reason ever to need to customize its looks besides the wallpaper
I take it you share Jobs' opinion on clothes? Same jeans, sneakers, turtleneck every day. Hey, it's perfectly functional, why would anyone want to vary things or look different? I mean, everyone has the same use-case, right?
Actually, now that you mention it, I pretty much wear the same-looking clothes all year long. I have one brand and a favorite cut for each of my garments and I stick to it. I even have 20 pairs of identical black socks for easy selection in the morning.
I like how iOS and OS X force us into one particular set of minimalistic UI. I despise skeuomorphism and I'm eager to see it go away on iOS. But I realize others may want to customize their OS, and for that they have to be grateful to have alternatives, namely Windows/Unix and Android/WP.
Hopefully, there has been some serious work done on iOS 7 and it'll probably address most of the OP's concerns.
However, I do hope they introduce none of these customization shenanigans. I don't care for widgets (nor do I want another icon or thing I cannot remove from my homescreen). If the base OS is sufficiently good UI-wise, there is no reason ever to need to customize its looks besides the wallpaper (e.g. OS X).