9 ms·

Android vs. iPhone: How Google is winning hearts of developers

83 points by cwan 16y ago

draper 16y ago
Developers. Good and Evil. Security researcher creates botnet for Android, tricks 300 users to download the app. " a pair of Android apps written by security researcher Jon Oberheide to demonstrate a method of creating a "botnet" of hijacked phones. By cloaking an application capable of "fetching" new exploit code at will in a fake application offering preview pictures of the upcoming "Twilight Eclipse" film, he tricked more than 300 users into downloading the software. The lesson: a less friendly developer could have used that bait and switch to plant malware on users' devices." "if Oberheide hadn't presented his research at the SummerCon hacker conference there's no reason to believe that Google would have been aware of the darker side of these applications in the first place." http://blogs.forbes.com/firewall/2010/06/25/google-flips-kill-switch-deletes-and-downplays-botnet-demo-android-apps/ http://blogs.forbes.com/firewall/2010/06/25/google-flips-kil...
jsz0 16y ago
The big problem I have with Android apps is just how terrible the GUIs are. They range from mediocre to unusable. For example: K-9 Mail on Android: http://tiny.cc/l965n http://tiny.cc/l965n Mail on iPhone: http://tiny.cc/ss4e9 http://tiny.cc/ss4e9 HTC Mail on Android: http://tiny.cc/b2f6m http://tiny.cc/b2f6m
- starnix17 16y ago
  I love Android and use a Droid as my phone but I totally agree with you, theu really need to step up with their UI. It seems that they know this. They hired the lead designer for WebOS a while back and according to TechCrunch the next release after Froyo is all UI stuff: http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/16/android-team-laser-focused-on-the-user-experience-for-next-release/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/16/android-team-laser-focused-...
  - defrex 16y ago
    One can write good looking apps for Android. It's just not as easy as it is for iPhone. Having done both myself: on iPhone you can just throw together a bunch of default widgets to get the job done and your app will look pretty good. Doing the same on android.. not so much. However, the latest apps out of Google (IO Schedule, Twitter) are using some of android's new UI patters, and they look good. Hopefully these new designs will be reflected more in the widgets shipped with 2.3.
- masklinn 16y ago
  I heard that the gmail client was much better than the android general mail client. How do you feel about it? (btw mail for iOS is not a very good mail client either, though it looks pretty nice and has been improved a bit in iOS4)
  - malkia 16y ago
    That's true. Hopefully I have only gmail account that I use frequently, I also have me/mac.com one, but I rarely use it. Google shines in the web also with gmail.com, while somehow Mac's me.com feels slow, also their Mail client is not that good either, but the rest of the Apps are top-notch. And Mail for iPhone rocks! Too bad I don't use my iPhone as phone, just for developing (T-Mobile customer with G1).
  - litewulf 16y ago
    The mail application on Android feels very clunky, but I think the gmail application on both Android and iPhone are pretty comparable in terms of features/flow.
  - jsz0 16y ago
    The GMail client is OK but it's lacking in the feature department. No option for a 2-3 line preview of the message body, when composing a message you can't pick contacts from your GMail contacts or local address book -- you have to type in the addresses each time, as far as I can tell it doesn't support copy & paste.
    - cheald 16y ago
      No multiline is a fair point. Message composition auto-fills the recipient when you start typing - I can get to my intended recipient in 1-2 taps, usually. I prefer it that way, though I can see how others might now. You can, though, just tap a contact's email to start a new email to them. It certainly does support copy-paste, though. I'm on 2.2, so that may be part of it, perhaps?
      - biafra 16y ago
- vito 16y ago
  Might as well throw the normal GMail app into the mix: http://smarterware.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/android21-gmailundo.png http://smarterware.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/android21-... (via http://smarterware.org/4308/android-2-1s-best-features-in-screenshots http://smarterware.org/4308/android-2-1s-best-features-in-sc...).
  - jokermatt999 16y ago
    It seems odd that GMail's interface is so horrible to use when Google Reader's is awesome. I actually like the mobile version of Reader better than the desktop version, currently. I wonder if they're made by the same team...
    - jokermatt999 16y ago
      I should add that I mean the mobile versions of both. GMail's desktop interface is great.
- chmike 16y ago
  I'm using K-9 on my HTC Desire and Apple mail on my iPad and I like both. Note that the GUI of my K-9 application is different than the one you show. Keep in mind that they may iterate, which BTW is apparently more easy on Andoid than on AppleStore. Anyway, generalizing on your personal experience and taste is not very instructive.
spicyj 16y ago
The huge quotation mark in that pull quote looks ridiculous. (Well, the small one does, too, but it's slightly less noticeable.)
thinkcomp 16y ago
This must be some sort of joke... Google certainly hasn't won my heart. Working with Eclipse and their SDK makes me want to throw my computer out the window, along with their phone.
- martythemaniak 16y ago
  The title of the article was "Google winning the hearts of developers" not "Google winning the heart of thinkcomp from Hacker News".
  - thinkcomp 16y ago
    Well, perhaps this was my error, but I considered myself a developer as someone who had written Java code using the Android SDK for later deployment on Android devices.
- vito 16y ago
  Who says you have to use Eclipse? Just use your favorite editor, and run "adb install" to install it to the device or emulator for testing.
- biafra 16y ago
  You can use any IDE you want (I use IntelliJ IDEA), and you do not have to use Java either. You can develop in Scala, or via the NDK in about any language you want. Then you can do a lot without using the SDK. But AFAIK you need a small GUI-wrapper around you native code to interact with the user.
amichail 16y ago
As I live in Canada, I don't even have the option of selling apps via the Android Market.
- mclin 16y ago
  Yea, wtf! And there's basically no word on wether they're even working on in.
  - tomjen3 16y ago
    They are not. But it is a general problem with Google, they don't give a shit about you if you aren't American (take google voice for example, they also only work in the US).
- tszming 16y ago
  In Hong Kong, we don't even have the option to BUY apps in Android Market.
credo 16y ago
I wrote a blog post on a related topic last week. Here is some more relevant data The folks at http://larvalabs.com/blog/android/android-market-payouts-total-2-of-app-stores-1b/ http://larvalabs.com/blog/android/android-market-payouts-tot... say that only 13 Android apps have got more than 50,000 downloads. A greater number of iPhone apps have got more than a million downloads. This should give you a good indication of two things (a) which platform successful developers focus on and (b) how many Android users vote with their wallet to indicate that the Android market has good apps. Edit: It is interesting to see the downvotes canceling out some of the upvotes :) I understand that some people may not like these numbers, but the commenter/reply suggesting that the numbers are "misleading" (because money-making iPhone apps are older) is mistaken. Consider the fact that the iPhone Angry Birds app has got more than 4 million downloads in less than 4 months. A paid iPhone app in the #1 slot for a month can get more than a million downloads in that month. Now think about how many downloads a #1 or #10 paid Android app can get in one month.
- sandGorgon 16y ago
  has the Android market opened up paid apps outside the U.S. ?
  - starnix17 16y ago
    The Market itself is open to lots of countries, but many of these countries don't have support for paid apps yet (only free) which is very frustrating.
    - buster 16y ago
      What's many? At least in germany it's open for paid apps for a year or more. Didn't think there are still countries.. that's frustrating indeed. At least there are other markets (slideme)
      - tomjen3 16y ago
        Australia, Denmark, Russia, etc. Actually I seem to remember that the only countries in Europe who are allowed to play are Germany, France and the UK. It is being frustrating because it could be fixed tomorrow - the issue is that Google is using its own payment system (google checkout) instead of a real payment system such as paypal. If you ask me, it borders on what Microsoft did with IE and netscape in the nineteens.
thought_alarm 16y ago
Correction: How Google is trying to win the hearts of developers. Currently they only deliver a fraction of users to developers compared to the App Store, their "Market" has suffered from recent outages and glitches, they're struggling to cope with device and OS fragmentation, they force developers to remit their own taxes, and there are some glaring omissions in the countries and regions they support. I think they need to try harder.
- GeneralMaximus 16y ago
  Also, their Marketplace is limited to just a couple of countries (which does not include India). I would love to jump into Android development, but then I'll have to manage payments myself. The Android Marketplace cannot possibly compete with the AppStore. Not yet.
  - lut4rp 16y ago
    ORLY.
MWinther 16y ago
It's a strange title... It doesn't seem to be much about Google winning the hearts of anyone, even though this particular developer chose Android because he was familiar with Java from before. Seems more like brain-winning to me. It seems like a moderately good piece on someone who has chosen to develop for Android though, even though I would have liked to see the conclusion (that the choice to develop for Android was looking good) supported by some kind of metric, I didn't get any feel for the success of his company so far.
tom_ilsinszki 16y ago
The cutting edge apps will be developed for the iPhone first, and then ported to Android (if it's even possible). Reasons behind my claim: Device fragmentation: If an app makes heavy use of a built-in sensor (eg. accelerometer), it's much harder to test the app with all Android devices. Some of the Android devices might not even have the sensor, that the app uses, which will result in an angry customer. And angry customers are bad news, when you aim for word-of-mouth marketing. Low-level coding: With the iPhone, it's possible to implement cpu intensive code blocks in assembly optimized for each generation iPhone, and thus optimize the code, so that you make the most of your resources. If I'm not mistaken Android only supports Java.
- wmf 16y ago
  Android has supported C/asm for a while, but your other points stand.
- cma 16y ago
  >Some of the Android devices might not even have the sensor, that the app uses Same goes for iPhone (e.g. the new gyro, the front facing camera).
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - ugh 16y ago
    Don’t forget the iPod touch. I’m really annoyed whenever some app doesn’t check whether there is a camera and just displays a camera button, no matter what (prompting the standard “no camera” dialog).
    - smokey_the_bear 16y ago
      Apple will generally not approve an app that does this if they notice
- mkramlich 16y ago
  Fragmentation: iPad, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch 2G, iPod Touch... Each with different capabilities and hardware specs. I've shipped titles to the App Store where I had to tip toe through the minefield of all those permutations, making sure the app worked correctly and/or similarly on all. Sometimes pretty hard to do. Android more fragmented? Surely.
bmalicoat 16y ago
I thought the article would be all about how Google gives developers free phones at all their conferences.
kqueue 16y ago
It doesn't matter, what matters is the consumer.
- code_duck 16y ago
  The consumers will go where the software is, in some cases. Take a look at the Sega vs. Nintendo market of the 8-bit 80s in the US - Nintendo offered a larger market, and locked up all the developers in exclusivity contracts. Even with superior hardware, Sega couldn't compete because they couldn't get many third party developers to develope for the Master System.
ww520 16y ago
I'm actually building an Android app now instead of iPhone app. Here are the rationals: 1. I don't have an iPhone nor an Android phone so there's no inclination from the device point of view, 2. My last mac was 10 years old and can't be used for IPhone development while Android app can be developed on Windows/Linux machine. 3. The low downloads and low app numbers on Android side indicates that it's a virgin market while the device numbers are huge. We'll see how it goes.
wallflower 16y ago
If Google would only buy Titanium or Phonegap to overnight make it easier to build Android apps. But they won't. Because they don't care about making better tools.
ryanjmo 16y ago
So one problem I have with developing for the Android platform, is that I don't know how to go about it and I don't understand the different Android versions and which phones have which version of the OS and how many people have each version. Starting development for the iPhone was really simple, I went to one place on Apples site, downloaded xcode and started building. While I don't think it will have hard to figure out all the answers to my questions once I get started, there are a lot of unknowns for me in terms of the Android platform. My main point is this, it is much more clear how to get started building for the iPhone, which I think gives Apple a large advantage.
- portlandFan12 16y ago
  http://developer.android.com/index.html http://developer.android.com/index.html should get you started. It even has a link to "Target Devices" that shows you what percentage of active devices run each version of the Android OS.
- ww520 16y ago
  For me, I just develop for the lowest common version, 1.5. Don't need the latest feature in my app. The important thing is to figure out what's interesting and useful for the end user, not the latest and greatest OS feature.
  - ryanjmo 16y ago
    Cool everyone, thanks for the info. This makes sense that the software would be forward compatible (I guess I should have assumed this, but I didn't even know this was the case). The only significant thing that we need are push notifications; in which version did push notifications start, did Google change how they were done?
- biafra 16y ago
  Maybe this site helps with the fragmentation issues: http://androidfragmentation.com/ http://androidfragmentation.com/
rbreve 16y ago
After using the iphone for 2 years, I decided to try the nexus one Google gave us at googleio. What I really like about the nexus one is the seamless integration with google apps, gmail, running gtalk in the background etc., but thats it. Most of the apps I have downloaded really sucks, their UI is terrible and they crash often. The multitouch response on google maps is not that good,the pinch doesn't respond that well. Google needs to polish a lot of things, and we are still waiting for Froyo to come out.
- kelnos 16y ago
  The multitouch issues on the N1 are actually because the touch screen on the N1 is (when compared to the Droid) crap. Google has acknowledged this (sorta) but say they can't do anything about it. There's actually an app called "Multitouch Vis Test" that you can download and play with that easily demonstrates how easily the touch screen gets confused when you have two fingers on it.
paul9290 16y ago
Google get rid of Google Checkout and allow users to pay via their cellphone bills for apps. Also my assessment of Android users vs. iPhone users is the latter buys their music from iTunes, while a big portion of the former download from p2p and the alike.
donaq 16y ago
In the places where Google Checkout supports seller accounts, perhaps. The rest of us are mostly giving Android development a miss because we can't sell apps.
- extension 16y ago
  This seems like a serious shortcoming to me. I can't sell from Canada, for example. Presumably this will improve with time. I'm also really scared of dealing with Google's customer service if anything goes wrong with my merchant account.
freakwit 16y ago
I don't think Google is winning hearts - rather, they are losing hearts more slowly than Apple.
nrbafna 16y ago
True. Considering that one can develop android app on any machine but iPhone SDK requires Mac OS (else they can't be published to the app store). I suppose, Apple has lost a lot of hearts after the series of close-structured and seemingly unfair app store policies. Though the fairness could be debated and a different issue altogether.
parktheredcar 16y ago
Let's not forget the awesome easter eggs thrown throughout- I've never been so happy reading docs. In Log... http://developer.android.com/reference/android/util/Log.html#wtf%28java.lang.String,%20java.lang.String%29 http://developer.android.com/reference/android/util/Log.html... and SensorManager. http://developer.android.com/reference/android/hardware/SensorManager.html#constants http://developer.android.com/reference/android/hardware/Sens...
moeffju 16y ago
A huge impediment to developing apps for Android seem to be the absolutely incredible shortcomings of Google Checkout. Most countries cannot even buy paid apps, even fewer countries can publish paid apps. That kills pretty much any incentive for many developers, especially with a new "iPhone devs make bajillions" article every other day. The saddest thing about it is that Google do not seem to be moving about this, at all. Android Apps, E-Commerce sites, etc., lots of people are waiting for worldwide Google Checkout. I don't get why Google don't get it.
cracki 16y ago
reads like advertising. where's the technical meat?

83 points by cwan 16y ago

Developers. Good and Evil. Security researcher creates botnet for Android, tricks 300 users to download the app. " a pair of Android apps written by security researcher Jon Oberheide to demonstrate a method of creating a "botnet" of hijacked phones. By cloaking an application capable of "fetching" new exploit code at will in a fake application offering preview pictures of the upcoming "Twilight Eclipse" film, he tricked more than 300 users into downloading the software. The lesson: a less friendly developer could have used that bait and switch to plant malware on users' devices." "if Oberheide hadn't presented his research at the SummerCon hacker conference there's no reason to believe that Google would have been aware of the darker side of these applications in the first place." http://blogs.forbes.com/firewall/2010/06/25/google-flips-kill-switch-deletes-and-downplays-botnet-demo-android-apps/ http://blogs.forbes.com/firewall/2010/06/25/google-flips-kil...

jsz0 16y ago

The big problem I have with Android apps is just how terrible the GUIs are. They range from mediocre to unusable. For example: K-9 Mail on Android: http://tiny.cc/l965n http://tiny.cc/l965n Mail on iPhone: http://tiny.cc/ss4e9 http://tiny.cc/ss4e9 HTC Mail on Android: http://tiny.cc/b2f6m http://tiny.cc/b2f6m

starnix17 16y ago
I love Android and use a Droid as my phone but I totally agree with you, theu really need to step up with their UI. It seems that they know this. They hired the lead designer for WebOS a while back and according to TechCrunch the next release after Froyo is all UI stuff: http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/16/android-team-laser-focused-on-the-user-experience-for-next-release/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/16/android-team-laser-focused-...
- defrex 16y ago
  One can write good looking apps for Android. It's just not as easy as it is for iPhone. Having done both myself: on iPhone you can just throw together a bunch of default widgets to get the job done and your app will look pretty good. Doing the same on android.. not so much. However, the latest apps out of Google (IO Schedule, Twitter) are using some of android's new UI patters, and they look good. Hopefully these new designs will be reflected more in the widgets shipped with 2.3.
masklinn 16y ago
I heard that the gmail client was much better than the android general mail client. How do you feel about it? (btw mail for iOS is not a very good mail client either, though it looks pretty nice and has been improved a bit in iOS4)
- malkia 16y ago
  That's true. Hopefully I have only gmail account that I use frequently, I also have me/mac.com one, but I rarely use it. Google shines in the web also with gmail.com, while somehow Mac's me.com feels slow, also their Mail client is not that good either, but the rest of the Apps are top-notch. And Mail for iPhone rocks! Too bad I don't use my iPhone as phone, just for developing (T-Mobile customer with G1).
- litewulf 16y ago
  The mail application on Android feels very clunky, but I think the gmail application on both Android and iPhone are pretty comparable in terms of features/flow.
- jsz0 16y ago
  The GMail client is OK but it's lacking in the feature department. No option for a 2-3 line preview of the message body, when composing a message you can't pick contacts from your GMail contacts or local address book -- you have to type in the addresses each time, as far as I can tell it doesn't support copy & paste.
  - cheald 16y ago
    No multiline is a fair point. Message composition auto-fills the recipient when you start typing - I can get to my intended recipient in 1-2 taps, usually. I prefer it that way, though I can see how others might now. You can, though, just tap a contact's email to start a new email to them. It certainly does support copy-paste, though. I'm on 2.2, so that may be part of it, perhaps?
    - biafra 16y ago
vito 16y ago
Might as well throw the normal GMail app into the mix: http://smarterware.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/android21-gmailundo.png http://smarterware.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/android21-... (via http://smarterware.org/4308/android-2-1s-best-features-in-screenshots http://smarterware.org/4308/android-2-1s-best-features-in-sc...).
- jokermatt999 16y ago
  It seems odd that GMail's interface is so horrible to use when Google Reader's is awesome. I actually like the mobile version of Reader better than the desktop version, currently. I wonder if they're made by the same team...
  - jokermatt999 16y ago
    I should add that I mean the mobile versions of both. GMail's desktop interface is great.
chmike 16y ago
I'm using K-9 on my HTC Desire and Apple mail on my iPad and I like both. Note that the GUI of my K-9 application is different than the one you show. Keep in mind that they may iterate, which BTW is apparently more easy on Andoid than on AppleStore. Anyway, generalizing on your personal experience and taste is not very instructive.

spicyj 16y ago

The huge quotation mark in that pull quote looks ridiculous. (Well, the small one does, too, but it's slightly less noticeable.)

thinkcomp 16y ago

This must be some sort of joke... Google certainly hasn't won my heart. Working with Eclipse and their SDK makes me want to throw my computer out the window, along with their phone.

martythemaniak 16y ago
The title of the article was "Google winning the hearts of developers" not "Google winning the heart of thinkcomp from Hacker News".
- thinkcomp 16y ago
  Well, perhaps this was my error, but I considered myself a developer as someone who had written Java code using the Android SDK for later deployment on Android devices.
vito 16y ago
Who says you have to use Eclipse? Just use your favorite editor, and run "adb install" to install it to the device or emulator for testing.
biafra 16y ago
You can use any IDE you want (I use IntelliJ IDEA), and you do not have to use Java either. You can develop in Scala, or via the NDK in about any language you want. Then you can do a lot without using the SDK. But AFAIK you need a small GUI-wrapper around you native code to interact with the user.

amichail 16y ago

As I live in Canada, I don't even have the option of selling apps via the Android Market.

mclin 16y ago
Yea, wtf! And there's basically no word on wether they're even working on in.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  They are not. But it is a general problem with Google, they don't give a shit about you if you aren't American (take google voice for example, they also only work in the US).
tszming 16y ago
In Hong Kong, we don't even have the option to BUY apps in Android Market.

credo 16y ago

I wrote a blog post on a related topic last week. Here is some more relevant data The folks at http://larvalabs.com/blog/android/android-market-payouts-total-2-of-app-stores-1b/ http://larvalabs.com/blog/android/android-market-payouts-tot... say that only 13 Android apps have got more than 50,000 downloads. A greater number of iPhone apps have got more than a million downloads. This should give you a good indication of two things (a) which platform successful developers focus on and (b) how many Android users vote with their wallet to indicate that the Android market has good apps. Edit: It is interesting to see the downvotes canceling out some of the upvotes :) I understand that some people may not like these numbers, but the commenter/reply suggesting that the numbers are "misleading" (because money-making iPhone apps are older) is mistaken. Consider the fact that the iPhone Angry Birds app has got more than 4 million downloads in less than 4 months. A paid iPhone app in the #1 slot for a month can get more than a million downloads in that month. Now think about how many downloads a #1 or #10 paid Android app can get in one month.

sandGorgon 16y ago
has the Android market opened up paid apps outside the U.S. ?
- starnix17 16y ago
  The Market itself is open to lots of countries, but many of these countries don't have support for paid apps yet (only free) which is very frustrating.
  - buster 16y ago
    What's many? At least in germany it's open for paid apps for a year or more. Didn't think there are still countries.. that's frustrating indeed. At least there are other markets (slideme)
    - tomjen3 16y ago
      Australia, Denmark, Russia, etc. Actually I seem to remember that the only countries in Europe who are allowed to play are Germany, France and the UK. It is being frustrating because it could be fixed tomorrow - the issue is that Google is using its own payment system (google checkout) instead of a real payment system such as paypal. If you ask me, it borders on what Microsoft did with IE and netscape in the nineteens.

thought_alarm 16y ago

Correction: How Google is trying to win the hearts of developers. Currently they only deliver a fraction of users to developers compared to the App Store, their "Market" has suffered from recent outages and glitches, they're struggling to cope with device and OS fragmentation, they force developers to remit their own taxes, and there are some glaring omissions in the countries and regions they support. I think they need to try harder.

GeneralMaximus 16y ago
Also, their Marketplace is limited to just a couple of countries (which does not include India). I would love to jump into Android development, but then I'll have to manage payments myself. The Android Marketplace cannot possibly compete with the AppStore. Not yet.
- lut4rp 16y ago
  ORLY.

MWinther 16y ago

It's a strange title... It doesn't seem to be much about Google winning the hearts of anyone, even though this particular developer chose Android because he was familiar with Java from before. Seems more like brain-winning to me. It seems like a moderately good piece on someone who has chosen to develop for Android though, even though I would have liked to see the conclusion (that the choice to develop for Android was looking good) supported by some kind of metric, I didn't get any feel for the success of his company so far.

tom_ilsinszki 16y ago

The cutting edge apps will be developed for the iPhone first, and then ported to Android (if it's even possible). Reasons behind my claim: Device fragmentation: If an app makes heavy use of a built-in sensor (eg. accelerometer), it's much harder to test the app with all Android devices. Some of the Android devices might not even have the sensor, that the app uses, which will result in an angry customer. And angry customers are bad news, when you aim for word-of-mouth marketing. Low-level coding: With the iPhone, it's possible to implement cpu intensive code blocks in assembly optimized for each generation iPhone, and thus optimize the code, so that you make the most of your resources. If I'm not mistaken Android only supports Java.

wmf 16y ago
Android has supported C/asm for a while, but your other points stand.
cma 16y ago
>Some of the Android devices might not even have the sensor, that the app uses Same goes for iPhone (e.g. the new gyro, the front facing camera).
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- ugh 16y ago
  Don’t forget the iPod touch. I’m really annoyed whenever some app doesn’t check whether there is a camera and just displays a camera button, no matter what (prompting the standard “no camera” dialog).
  - smokey_the_bear 16y ago
    Apple will generally not approve an app that does this if they notice
mkramlich 16y ago
Fragmentation: iPad, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch 2G, iPod Touch... Each with different capabilities and hardware specs. I've shipped titles to the App Store where I had to tip toe through the minefield of all those permutations, making sure the app worked correctly and/or similarly on all. Sometimes pretty hard to do. Android more fragmented? Surely.

bmalicoat 16y ago

I thought the article would be all about how Google gives developers free phones at all their conferences.

kqueue 16y ago

It doesn't matter, what matters is the consumer.

code_duck 16y ago
The consumers will go where the software is, in some cases. Take a look at the Sega vs. Nintendo market of the 8-bit 80s in the US - Nintendo offered a larger market, and locked up all the developers in exclusivity contracts. Even with superior hardware, Sega couldn't compete because they couldn't get many third party developers to develope for the Master System.

ww520 16y ago

I'm actually building an Android app now instead of iPhone app. Here are the rationals: 1. I don't have an iPhone nor an Android phone so there's no inclination from the device point of view, 2. My last mac was 10 years old and can't be used for IPhone development while Android app can be developed on Windows/Linux machine. 3. The low downloads and low app numbers on Android side indicates that it's a virgin market while the device numbers are huge. We'll see how it goes.

wallflower 16y ago

If Google would only buy Titanium or Phonegap to overnight make it easier to build Android apps. But they won't. Because they don't care about making better tools.

ryanjmo 16y ago

So one problem I have with developing for the Android platform, is that I don't know how to go about it and I don't understand the different Android versions and which phones have which version of the OS and how many people have each version. Starting development for the iPhone was really simple, I went to one place on Apples site, downloaded xcode and started building. While I don't think it will have hard to figure out all the answers to my questions once I get started, there are a lot of unknowns for me in terms of the Android platform. My main point is this, it is much more clear how to get started building for the iPhone, which I think gives Apple a large advantage.

portlandFan12 16y ago
http://developer.android.com/index.html http://developer.android.com/index.html should get you started. It even has a link to "Target Devices" that shows you what percentage of active devices run each version of the Android OS.
ww520 16y ago
For me, I just develop for the lowest common version, 1.5. Don't need the latest feature in my app. The important thing is to figure out what's interesting and useful for the end user, not the latest and greatest OS feature.
- ryanjmo 16y ago
  Cool everyone, thanks for the info. This makes sense that the software would be forward compatible (I guess I should have assumed this, but I didn't even know this was the case). The only significant thing that we need are push notifications; in which version did push notifications start, did Google change how they were done?
biafra 16y ago
Maybe this site helps with the fragmentation issues: http://androidfragmentation.com/ http://androidfragmentation.com/

rbreve 16y ago

After using the iphone for 2 years, I decided to try the nexus one Google gave us at googleio. What I really like about the nexus one is the seamless integration with google apps, gmail, running gtalk in the background etc., but thats it. Most of the apps I have downloaded really sucks, their UI is terrible and they crash often. The multitouch response on google maps is not that good,the pinch doesn't respond that well. Google needs to polish a lot of things, and we are still waiting for Froyo to come out.

kelnos 16y ago
The multitouch issues on the N1 are actually because the touch screen on the N1 is (when compared to the Droid) crap. Google has acknowledged this (sorta) but say they can't do anything about it. There's actually an app called "Multitouch Vis Test" that you can download and play with that easily demonstrates how easily the touch screen gets confused when you have two fingers on it.

paul9290 16y ago

Google get rid of Google Checkout and allow users to pay via their cellphone bills for apps. Also my assessment of Android users vs. iPhone users is the latter buys their music from iTunes, while a big portion of the former download from p2p and the alike.

donaq 16y ago

In the places where Google Checkout supports seller accounts, perhaps. The rest of us are mostly giving Android development a miss because we can't sell apps.

extension 16y ago
This seems like a serious shortcoming to me. I can't sell from Canada, for example. Presumably this will improve with time. I'm also really scared of dealing with Google's customer service if anything goes wrong with my merchant account.

freakwit 16y ago

I don't think Google is winning hearts - rather, they are losing hearts more slowly than Apple.

nrbafna 16y ago

True. Considering that one can develop android app on any machine but iPhone SDK requires Mac OS (else they can't be published to the app store). I suppose, Apple has lost a lot of hearts after the series of close-structured and seemingly unfair app store policies. Though the fairness could be debated and a different issue altogether.

parktheredcar 16y ago

Let's not forget the awesome easter eggs thrown throughout- I've never been so happy reading docs. In Log... http://developer.android.com/reference/android/util/Log.html#wtf%28java.lang.String,%20java.lang.String%29 http://developer.android.com/reference/android/util/Log.html... and SensorManager. http://developer.android.com/reference/android/hardware/SensorManager.html#constants http://developer.android.com/reference/android/hardware/Sens...

moeffju 16y ago

A huge impediment to developing apps for Android seem to be the absolutely incredible shortcomings of Google Checkout. Most countries cannot even buy paid apps, even fewer countries can publish paid apps. That kills pretty much any incentive for many developers, especially with a new "iPhone devs make bajillions" article every other day. The saddest thing about it is that Google do not seem to be moving about this, at all. Android Apps, E-Commerce sites, etc., lots of people are waiting for worldwide Google Checkout. I don't get why Google don't get it.

cracki 16y ago

reads like advertising. where's the technical meat?