the problem is the gateways
Of course, ripple without gateways is nothing. However, ripple + gateways provides value that gateways alone do not provide - you can move between different currencies handled by different gateways with very little overhead.
Sending to arbitrary people is not possible as long as there is no way for them to receive money - but using the bridge mechanism you can send at least bitcoins (and probably some larger alt coins too, didn't check that) to arbitrary bitcoin addresses. Don't know when it will be possible to send EUR or USD into bank accounts directly, but they're probably already working on that.
Onkel Paul
