I got the impression that they liked/used the Interface Builder on the iphone SDK (the comment on the easy of making things pretty) - if that is the case that is telling. I do no iphone dev, but I have some close friends who are prolific and successful iphone devs, and they take a dim view of anyone who thinks it is more than a toy (of course, maybe something else was meant? I dunno - but yeah, GridBag+XML sounds horrid doesn't it).

I guess things like Charles Nutter's duby language (and other alternative JVM langs) can really make a much more pleasant experience.