@unknownuser said:

questions that seem to come up again and again

I totally agree with these points. It's great how you distilled all the discussions and feature requests into these three points! In fact on that has been discussed a lot is the SketchUp App Store! (read here). We ruby developers haven't dared to take on this (believing the SketchUp team would suddenly unpack/release such a gift). Now still nothing of that happened for a long time, except someone was working on such a store, than it got quiet again – but it seems this silence is the foretoken of something big. Let's look forward on SketchUp 2013.

@unknownuser said:

allowing Trimble to integrate it's construction software and tools without turning SU into a purely construction-oriented program.
That [extendibility/platform] is Trimble's vision, and exactly the reason why they bought SketchUp.