> The iOS tradeoff apparently is preferred by these developers.

Could be a bit of momentum. Androids audio stack started out with a completely incompetent latency of near 500ms pre Jellybean, was made a bit less terrible through the years [1], and only becoming acceptable in 2021 [2], still near 2x of iPhone from over a decade before.

Apps like garage band were so impressive because could not function on Android.

[1] https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2018/02/17/10-years-later...

[2] https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2021/03/an-update-...