If you are developing for iOS or Android, you can replace the entire preceding two paragraphs with one sentence: Press the button that says Build and Run (or the equivalent button within Eclipse for Android).
snort Sure, or at least that's what happens after you've gone through provisioning hell on the iPhone. (I don't know how the Playbook works, that may be a problem as well).
For what it's worth, the iPhone SDK was much less developer-friendly early on than it is today - an unpolished developer experience, by itself, won't be a showstopper. What will really matter is how many people buy the Playbook.
For iOS you have to provision the device and then sign the app as part of the build process. For the Playbook, you only sign the app so there are fewer things to go wrong. The tools run from the command line, but work well if you follow the instructions. My biggest complaint is that it can be tough to find documentation when you do have an error.
snort Sure, or at least that's what happens after you've gone through provisioning hell on the iPhone. (I don't know how the Playbook works, that may be a problem as well).
For what it's worth, the iPhone SDK was much less developer-friendly early on than it is today - an unpolished developer experience, by itself, won't be a showstopper. What will really matter is how many people buy the Playbook.