Yes, I thought so too when I first was looking into AngularFire. However, the point of OPs article seems to be that it's great for prototyping, not production,

Yes, I thought so too when I first was looking into AngularFire. However, the point of OPs article seems to be that it's great for prototyping, not production, and that was an 'aha!' for me as to its usefulness.