That is so definitely true. You dont know how many people i am working with at the consulting company i work for that would say ...
"why is this vendor charging X millions for this crappy software, i could have done this as a uni student" the software may be crappy but they dont realize the amount of work that goes into getting the application polished, having correct messages for all actions and making it generally user friendly. Also the fact that it does the job that someone needs done is why someone is willing to pay X millions for it.
The devil is definitely in the detail ...
Agreed. Development is not trivial all around.
I think my original issue with iPhone dev was that POS NDA Apple had originally. It made the web a virtual wasteland for good info and advice on programming pitfalls and code snippets.
Coming from python and c# I was obviously spoiled =)
A lot of people, including me, have made the mistake of thinking that creating the product is simple but fail to realise how much work debugging, polishing, designing etc. is. The devil is in the details.