I'm an android developer and I agree with this comment. The article as a whole paints a really bad picture of Apple's development process when, in honesty, I wish Google would learn a bit from the things Apple does really well. I really hope people don't think it's okay to ship an app with a typo in the title -- that's just lazy and irresponsible. While I wish the $99 fee was only required to publish an app (as opposed to being required to develop one), I'm still waiting for the day when Google can truly compete with iOS on a platform and tools level. In my opinion, Google has a long way to go on that front despite their increasing market share (and all revenue advantages that ensue).
Say what you will about quality differences in the tools, but the availability of the tools comes down heavily in Android's favor. Further, getting through the developer-license-acquisition process is hit or miss -- some people have it easy, some have it hard. Despite whatever advantages it has, iOS obstructs the ability to learn from users' needs and iterate quickly. Yes, there are things that could be better in the android ecosystem. But the ease of getting a bugfix to your users matters, and iOS fails on this.
You can develop an app without paying the fee, the only catch is that you need to pay the 99 dollars to test on actual hardware, instead of the iOS Simulator, which is somewhat silly but par for the course when it comes to Apple.
