I'm in the mind. As much improvement as Linux GUIs have made over the years, there's always just been that last bit of polish they are missing that makes them feel just a bit klunky in comparison to an Apple OS. Does it affect performance, no, but it just has that OSS feel to it. I totally understand the $$$ differences involved, and modern *nix UIs have come a long way, but it's like that last mile problem they just can't quite get there. It does not make it unusable, it's just the thing that always makes it noticeably different.

considering the outright insane hiring practices of canonical im not surprised...

I think it's just the lack of consistency in app designs

> Animations, interactions, etc just feel… off somehow, like I’m using an early alpha build of software that has placeholders strewn about.

It's funny that I'm the complete opposite. I was fine with Android, switched to iPhone (as mentioned upthread) and everything feels off, like no one cared about the UI and UX, and bugs galore everywhere. If someone handed me my iPhone 12 Mini today I'd say they're running a beta version of iOS on it.

Maybe it's just a "get used to" thing as we're surely not the only ones having very opposite feelings about this. I've now had my iPhone for 4 years it seems, but I still feel like the OS is beta-level quality, should have gotten used to it by now...

QA for iOS has slipped in recent years, but I feel that’s a different matter. The issues I have with Android aren’t bugs, it’s more like odd choices for things like animation timing curves and nitty gritty things like that.

Bugs aside, it feels like touches more “directly” control iOS whereas with Android it’s like interactions are all passing through an additional layer, leading to an impression of disconnectedness. It’s not entirely unlike the phenomenon that used to be observable on some Linux desktops a decade+ ago when computers were weaker and you could “feel” the layering of X11, GTK, your compositor, DE, etc all kind of slip-sliding and not acting fully in concert, where Windows and OS X usually didn’t give this impression.