In my experience anything that Xcode promises to just work, just doesn't but yes they have at least improved provisioning.
The original point was that there are steps to go through, and creating a paid developer account is a non trivial step
The original point was that there are steps to go through, and creating a paid developer account is a non trivial step
> That's also because deploying an APK on a test device (or several devices) is way easier than deploying an IPA on an iOS device.
False.
> it's easy to push the APK to my phone as part of the build process, and I don't even have to plug my device in to do so.
Also true of iOS.
If you want to make the case that enrolling in the developer program is a hassle, that's fine, but it's misleading to make it sound as though that is part of the build process.
This works on any number of devices.
You need a Google Play Developer account in order to distribute through the Google Play store, but you can directly install an application on an unlimited number of devices for free without ever signing up for an account. This is not possible on iOS without jailbreaking every phone.