The only reason Bitcoin is more valuable then other altcoins is first mover advantage. It's the truth if you compare bitcoin to a lot of alt coins on the technical side Bitcoin is lacking heavily. If the Protocol was updated to do something more like a lot of altcoins do I feel this is what would truly make the Bitcoin price sky rocket.
I haven't seen any altcoins with any improvements yet. Perhaps one came along while I wasn't paying attention. Would you mind explaining which "improvement" you were thinking of?
Namecoin had a huge innovation on its hands with its integrated domain system that could lead to the web becoming decentralized. Imagine if bitcoin integrated something like that, we would see massive growth. However it seems many people in the Bitcoin community look down on any new innovation and don't want to see the protocol progress.
I've had similar thoughts but I also wonder if it is just not wanting to do anything to derail Bitcoin. I also don't see coins like Namecoin making huge leaps and bounds and I'm scratching my head trying to understand why that is.