This is may be a bit of a stretch, but Rally Interactive's beta site has a stunning full-size to smaller header animation.

When you scroll down into a case study, clicking the hamburger menu reveals a submenu that feels like small to full-size header transition.

Navigating left and right between case studies shows a horizontal fill transition similar to Parakeet's fill change.

I am primarily an iOS and front-end developer/designer in an agency environment, so take this with a grain of salt:

I think I develop for iOS partially because iOS projects have a faster turn around compared to similarly sized Android and web-based projects. I can't prove this. Because of this, perhaps another one of the reasons why iOS development is so lucrative is that the overhead for the iOS development life-cyle may be less in comparison to the breadth of the market you're developing for.

In both disciplines, the strict guidelines and limited number of device sizes allow me, and my team, to focus on the core functionality and experience design of an app instead of worrying around edge cases or device limitations.

And I totally agree with Aaron's point: Native Android...is not as well documented, has a poor toolchain and less refined APIs. Furthermore, I found it quite frustrating to troubleshoot issues that were caused, not necessarily caused by the code, but by limitations of one or two of the many devices we were testing on. Which may be more revealing of my process/skill, but Apple's devices are quite predictable and easy to debug.

Yea:

1. As 100% owner of HTF (together with his wife), Hoefler has been unjustly enriched by half of the value of HTF derived from Frere-Jones's performance of their agreement.

I was about to say no, but I just found a simple metal body for both Signo's and Hi-Tec C's: http://www.bigidesign.com/welcome/phx-pen-2/!

Oh, and the Muji pens are a good alternative to the Hi-Tec C pens, too.

I've used Hi-Tec C pens and I loved them. But their tips are a little too delicate and, in my experience, the gel ink is not at all water safe—that was a huge deal breaker for me. They're pretty smooth, but I've found that they're also prone to bleeding a bit which makes their lines a bit thicker than expected.

Hi-Tec C's are tempting pens because of their fine tips and their smooth writing, but I think the Uni-ball Signo gel pens are much better. The Signo model has waterfast ink; super-fine, durable tips; and they write smoothly as well!