The challenge is two parts: 1) creating an app that does what you want and does not ANR 2) creating an app that looks good and responds well. I stress that the 2nd part is what the users notice the most - they don't care about your well-designed network processor logic if it takes too long or lacks the shine and polish of an iOS equivalent app.
I'm not saying it is easy to polish an app on iOS. We've spent months polishing an iOS app to client satisfaction. The thing about Android is that clients are willing to accept less polish.
In my experience, the difference between Android and iOS for me is "How?" for the former versus "Is this even possible?" for the later.
Yes, iOS is friendlier to newbies, but Android is more flexible and allows pretty much anything you can think of. More complexity is the drawback of having more flexibility, but after learning the platform it isn't really that bad (as the article says, with which I agree).
The challenge is two parts: 1) creating an app that does what you want and does not ANR 2) creating an app that looks good and responds well. I stress that the 2nd part is what the users notice the most - they don't care about your well-designed network processor logic if it takes too long or lacks the shine and polish of an iOS equivalent app.
I'm not saying it is easy to polish an app on iOS. We've spent months polishing an iOS app to client satisfaction. The thing about Android is that clients are willing to accept less polish.