i think the best thing for you to do would be to go to a shop and see them as i think they can pretty much look the same on the screen. i'm not really into the whole tablet thing, however, i have recently played with an ipad and the samsung galaxy and from that experience i don't understand why anybody would buy samsung galaxy tablet. it's a lot smaller and it costs pretty much the same.
i think it all depends on what you want from it - like you said, in the reviews, some people love them and others hate the same thing. there's also that some people love apple (i am typing this on mac
) and some hate apple and would not buy an apple product even if it's infinitely better.
i think there's a lot more 'stuff' for the ipad simply because they had been running the app store for quite a while and it's constantly expanding. they definitely do have a head start.