Well, dealing with stuff that is not designed to be digital (e.g. most currencies on that planet) makes it really hard to apply the same measures as Bitcoin. After all, that's probably one of the reasons Bitcoin was invented in the first place.
Ripple definitely improves dealing with arbitrary assets, imho as much as possible - maybe in the future even more might be possible (BitShares for example tries to do something that goes potentially beyond IOUs), for the moment it seems to be one of the best and most developed solutions out there.
If you claim to understand Ripple, show us a real use case and not some hypothetical example to articulate the benefits.
Ripple can be MUCH easier explained and understood (how it works + the use cases) if you compare it to BitPay, not Bitcoin.
Some potential use case of Bitcoin seems to be for some people to act somehow like XRP in the global financial system (e.g. you buy BTC for USD, send them back home to Egypt and sell them for your local currency there), maybe that's why they don't see the use case for Ripple itself too or feel that it threatens BTC by making XRP more useful than BTC on their system.