I don't think AA's meal pre-select is all that great of a feature in my experience... I'm batting a .500 success rate on it in the last several months. One flight was mis-catered and the other had my chicken rice show up as beef rice. In the end I didn't care, I just have low expectations when it comes to inflight food anyway. Truthfully I'm usually not really hungry anyway because I've usually just had my fill on snacks and drinks at the lounge or had a work related lunch or dinner. Rarely am I counting on an airlines meal service for edible sustenance. (international is a different story though) I understand that some might value this feature. For me, as long as there's some whiskey in the galley I'm happy.

UA is slowly playing catch up with features other airlines offer (i.e. UA rolling out their Polaris soft/hard products), but immediately copy-catting features like meal selection might make them seem to be just that: copy cats going down a path just because the other guy did. I'm sure if it was economically feasible or overwhelmingly in demand they'd be all over it. Also, I think fixing internal problems have been more of their focus than product innovation and refinements. That certainly has been time and money draining for them.