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From the apps I've worked on, iOS is a much more profitable platform and thus gets the majority of the focus and the initial app releases. Then apps get ported to Android (where they get heavily pirated and generate a fraction of the sales - regardless if time is spent making the app as good or better than its iOS counterpart.)
That outlook seems like a self fulfilling prophecy.
From the apps I've worked on, iOS is a much more profitable platform and thus gets the majority of the focus and the initial app releases. Then apps get ported to Android (where they get heavily pirated and generate a fraction of the sales - regardless if time is spent making the app as good or better than its iOS counterpart.)
I'm an iPhone UI designer/developer and you can make a really nice looking app without doing any custom design work just by using the widgets that Apple provides. A good example of an app that was nearly all stock is Tweetie 1 for iPhone and it won an Apple Design Award. Apple has put an incredible amount of polish (single-pixel highlights and shadows, consistent sheen/gloss across elements, built-in animations for common interactions) into the widgets as part of UIKit, and then the apps that are included on the iPhone are also incredibly polished. This sets the bar very high and also gives a quality of UI design that developers can look up to and try to emulate.
The apps that Google built for Android (Maps in particular) are very clean and elegant but I would hesitate to call them beautiful or extremely polished. Google's design aesthetic typically eschews gradients, sheen, highlights and shadows in favor of a flatter, cleaner look and feel. Although Google's Android apps are well-designed, they don't look like a team of visual designers hand-crafted each and every corner like Apple's apps and UIKit widgets seem to be. Because of this cleaner, simpler aesthetic, the bar for "good-looking" on Android is a lot lower than for iPhone and it seems companies will cut corners on Android app UI design & visual polish because of it.
Another theory is that companies might feel that Android phone owners are more technical, more geeky, and thus "don't need" a really polished interface so they spend fewer resources on it. Once a few big companies release Android apps with a sub-par design, other companies see this and follow suit, continuing the trend forwards. Obviously this is a difficult stigma to get out of, but some companies are putting out great Android apps -- Gowalla comes to mind -- so there is hope.
From the apps I've worked on, iOS is a much more profitable platform and thus gets the majority of the focus and the initial app releases. Then apps get ported to Android (where they get heavily pirated and generate a fraction of the sales - regardless if time is spent making the app as good or better than its iOS counterpart.)
In my experience, the main reason is that you only need to design for one screen resolution on the iPhone (retina artwork doesn't really affect the screen layout). This makes it a lot easier to statically position elements and create pixel perfect effects. On the other hand, when you're dealing with dynamic layouts, you have to jump through a lot more hoops to make sure the app still looks good as the resolution is s…
Yep, I assume the FB app home page is half height to accommodate HVGA devices.
Apple just sets a higher bar, both because of Apple's own apps and the approval process, and developers code to the users' expectations.
Plus, with the nice looking built-in UI widgets and Interface Builder, it actually takes some effort to make an app look bad.
Laziness/incompetence? (I don't know how many times I've downloaded an Android equivalent to an iOS app only to find re-purposed, screen captured iOS graphics with a non-native UI)
Device fragmentation, no IB, perception that Android users don't appreciate polished UI/design - take your pick.
Regardless of which excuse is chosen, the blame lies with the designer/developer/manager, not the OS.
EDIT: I'm speaking of custom interfaces rather than stock OS controls and views. Those elements are obviously controlled by the OS.