> And this is part of the problem - it was never about detail, or more generally technical perfection.
While I agree with you for the most part, and never argue about gear (other than having been a fan of Bibble before they were bought).. there is one thing I really miss from your example photos, and from smartphone photography, and that is something being out of focus. Now, I'm not a great photographer, I just take snapshots and then edit them badly, but for example this I like: http://a.sandboxx.org/johann/376/
I wouldn't be surprised if that will one day be possible with very compact lenses, or with multiple ones plus software or whatever, but for the time being, at least for some shots, you need focal length period. Candid and news photography is a lot different from, say, wedding and product photography. And if an algorithm allows better handheld photos, it also makes tripod photos even better, so sometimes there isn't even a gap being closed, it all just gets shifted.
> nearly all cameras (including cell phone cameras) are well past the point of enabling.
During that same vacation, while sitting at the beach in the morning, I noticed a fish jumping out of the water. Using my 1337 video game target leading skills, I moved the viewfinder across the ocean surface where I expected the fish to be, and was able to take two photos of it, one with two ladies having a chat while doing their morning swim. Again, not a great photo, but for me as the person who sat there, it's a nice memory, something that will always make me smile http://a.sandboxx.org/johann/241/ And it's still totally a snapshot, I just sat at the beach, watching sea gulls, smoking cigarettes. Candid ocean photography, if you will ^^ Of course I got lucky, I wouldn't have had time to change lenses; but still, cell phones cameras are not "well past" being able to reach everywhere.
I'm really happy for anyone who makes photos, and I think you are right that dismissing them on technical grounds is silly. A good photo does not need to justify how or why it was done, and when it comes to once-in-a-lifetime moments, even a drawing from memory is better than nothing. But just like you can make a useful website with just HTML and no CSS, and a very pretty and functional one without Javascript, doesn't mean these tools don't have their uses, right? What's more, sometimes a website that works fine without them, would work even better with them, and not everybody who cares about progress and performance is not getting anything done - those things are orthogonal. It can't just be easily generalized.