I'm glad the OP is speaking out. A distressing tendency has developed among fandroids that is just like the ugly disease that afflicts Apple fanbois - if something is broken, one must not mention it or be demonized by the community, because we are SURE - ipso facto - that it cannot be that the device or software is ill-executed!! Friends, this pathology is not a good thing for Google or the internet-using world. What is good for them [I speak as a longtime high tech product manager] is to burn them thoroughly when they throw a clunker over the wall. That is what will make them better. the ills that were inflicted, for instance, in rushing 4.2 to the N7 is really inexcusable: it got that way due to poor process and practices in the development team and their interface with the marketeers [the PM should referee between the twain - and has to have backbone]. Fragmentation, app fallout, poor utilization of the hardware, wifi issues, batt issues, security leaks galore - it really reminds me of the early days of MS Windows. its fun for those who want to innovate [the custom ROM crowd is doing great things for humanity] but an irritant otherwise.
Everything 'good' about the OP's experience could have been experienced on a $90 tablet from one of the better makers, running 4.0.n on a cortex A9 dual, mali-400, with HDMI, real USB, and a micro-SD aux storage port. and running the latest FLASH player to boot. Instead he gets stuck with a class-leading display covering up a bunch of issues. and screen lift to give him something else to do. [see the threads on how to tape together your N7 to cure screen lift].
The iPAD mini is worth its conservative price of $329 usd. It is very, very well implemented, slick, competent, and has legitimate 13 hour batt life. For people that want to get on with their lives and not learn to be amateur android phacks, its a bargain [and I never owned an iphone or any mac-thingies other than the ones I'm paid to fix.... they DO break, and the parts are mostly off-shelf ordinary stuff]
I will continue to own and use android devices because I need to: my tech support clients in these days juggle all these devices. I get a "simple" call out for what is billed as "a bit of a wifi problem and the office"... when I get there I find the snake's den of everything - 'droid phones, iphones, ipods, ipads, PC's with 3 different iterations of windows and umpteen sub-divisions of versions running on goofy hardware, and all of them have issues.
Do Google a favor and stop defending them. they need to be caned when they make dumb engineering and product moves. cane them til they get the message. leave the public-experimentation to the chinese knockoffs