I think it the takeaway is slightly different: When many of Android's fundamental design decisions were made, specifically making UI animations take place in a normally-scheduled application thread, the prime competition/inspiration was the keyboard- and trackpad-driven interfaces of competitors such as Blackberry.

Apple, on the other hand, decided that a touch-based interface was the way to go. As such, Apple designed iOS to make rendering in a special, real-time priority thread to ensure responsiveness.