Only about 2-3 people understood anything the phone had to offer of about a dozen people. They recently had to take the entire administration through a full-day course on how to use the phone.
Do you think this 2 year old could understand the android platform as easily as she does iPhone OS?
While it's good to make products understandable by two-year-olds, there are other important considerations in UI. Can it help you accomplish the task efficiently? Reliably? Happily? Vim, for example would never stand up to the two-year-old test, but is nonetheless an extraordinarily capable and efficient text editor--which qualifies it, in my opinion, for "good UI".
I don't mean to imply Android is as readily cognizable to toddlers as the iPhone. What I mean to say is that streaming quickly from activity to activity through various stateless apps, each of which can plug into each other for various intents, is a more efficient way to accomplish tasks than quitting and re-opening apps from the home screen.
Given some time with an Android device, I think she would do just as well sampling apps on Android as she did on iPhone OS. Her way of launching an app, playing around and then pressing the Home button would work on Android just as fine.
I also believe there's quite a difference between a 2.5 year old playing around with an OS, and adults who may not be tech-savvy using a smartphone in a meaningful way.
Or to phrase it as a question, do you think those people would have as much trouble understanding the iPhone OS as they did the Android OS ?
aphyr makes a brilliant point that simplicity and power often compete with each other and maybe Apple is trying to target the less tech-savvy user.
Since I interpreted aphyrs comment as saying the Android app-switching method was easier, I was genuinely curious as to wether he thought the Android platform was overall as easy as the iPhone platform.