You said, "the experience would be the same." For the vast majority of users who expect the device to be productive out of the box, the experience would be significantly degraded.
ah yeah i did not articulate that fully. i see the implication i was making now
i meant they can maintain an app store experience without the bottlneck of downloading expected apps on day 1. instead of downloading and using data an wasting time, it would enable the app. so its the same "opt-in" experience as downloading but with benefits
otherwise why allocate disk space to be read only and have apps on it people might not want? (as far as user experience is concerned)