I think this article misses a point that has become standard. My understanding is that the historical consensus already was that the Copernican system was no more accurate than previous Ptolemaic system and for that reason in practice had as many ad-hoc corrections as the Ptolemaic system. The only thing the Ptolemaic system had was conceptual simplicity, simplicity in it's outline and that really can't be determined by a direct comparison of tables. That increased conceptual simplicity was a response to practical complexity may seem a bit strange but only if you want to ignore fairly natural intellectual impulses (if your system is moving towards complexity-overload, organizing it with simple principles seems like something worth investing in even if you see immediate improvements).

And naturally, "intelligent design" proponent Owen Gingerich might not the most unbiased in his judgments of obviousness here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Gingerich