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Good riddance! It’s not like they have actively been developing Android to support tablets. In fact, it is the other way around. The older versions had better s
by __sr__ 8y ago
Good riddance! It’s not like they have actively been developing Android to support tablets. In fact, it is the other way around. The older versions had better support for tablets. Even Nexus 9 was a half hearted attempt at best — and the rest is history. Google’s lack of interest in nowhere more evident than their own apps — many of them were just scaled versions of phone apps. And if Google is not bothering to optimise their apps for tablets, what motivation do third party developers have?
Strictly speaking, Android tablets never even competed in the same arena as the iPad. Samsung is an exception, but they don’t control the ecosystem — which makes things much harder for them — even if we ignore their atrocious software.
- euyyn 8y agoI admit that I haven't paid much attention. But the whole revamp of the UI framework into Fragments was precisely to let app developers support both phones and tablets. Why do you say older versions of Android had better support for tablets?
- wffurr 8y agoLots of Android system UI and first party apps had better tablet interfaces in ICS than they do in Nougat or Oreo.
- tomkarlo 8y agoThis is a bit of a stretch. There was a lot of work done on improving tablet support in K, L and M, including work to specifically support the Nexus 9 and Pixel C. There was also the addition of multi-window, etc.
- foobarbazetc 8y agoIt has nothing to do with APIs. Our app has a great tablet version, on par with iPad and we don’t use fragments at all. We just change things based on size. It’s more that Google obviously stopped caring about tablets many major versions ago.
- freedomben 8y agoFor what it's worth, there are Android tablet users out there like me that really appreciate the work you put into making the experience great :-)
- euyyn 8y agoSee but that doesn't answer my question: What makes you think that they stopped caring about tablets?
- gleenn 8y agoFragments were way over engineered. Many people completely ignored them because you basically had to rewrite a significant portion of your app to support the type of flexibility they were supposed to give you. The lifecycle of apps is already complicated enough, and fragments added even more complexity. Like another poster mentions, completely ignoring fragments is a pretty reasonable choice.
- etaioinshrdlu 8y agoIt was around the time I started playing with fragments that I realized that the native Java android toolkit was a giant pile of crap. Android, I think, is not even supposed to be a well-engineered system. It is not central to its purpose. Its purpose is to eat marketshare, collect data, and ensure there is an outlet for ads. It only has to work well enough to do those things :) I get the sense that it was all slapped together as quickly as possible.
- themacguffinman 8y agoWell, yeah, that's the goal of everything commercial. Being well-engineered is a means, not an end.
- etaioinshrdlu 8y agoNah, tons of companies are incredibly passionate about quality in itself. Sometimes to a fault!
- pjmlp 8y agoiOS and UWP are both commercial and the quality of their tooling and OS frameworks runs circles around Android's. Sadly it is hard to win over free beer.
- dcbadacd 8y agoI got the same impression, it's just filled with hacks to get proper behavior and don't get me started on the support libraries, oof how I hate those.
- digi_owl 8y agoKeep in mind that Fragments happened while Rubin was still nominally in control of Android. Once the civil war between him and Pichai had a clear winner (after all, for a while both ChromeOS and Android were poised to push into the same market), the tablet elements were depreciated rapidly as as Duarte was free to assert more control.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- shams93 8y agoChromeos with android is a lot more useful because you have full blown desktop chrome with chrome developer tools. The new chromeos devices have convertable touch screens and basically can function as tablets. But I own the new ipad because I don't have an iphone but still want my hands on these amazing Moog ios apps for my music. Android native is terrible for music, chrome browser itself has a much more highly developed api with webmidi and webaudio than you have with native android with its java based midi library.
- pjmlp 8y agoAnyone serious about audio on Android needs to use the NDK APIs with OpenSL or the new AAudio, everything else is just pain.
- jdietrich 8y agoMost Android devices aren't capable of truly low-latency audio (sub-10ms round-trip). This makes the total addressable market for pro audio apps very small, which means device manufacturers have little incentive to spend the engineering resources to provide low latency, which makes the total addressable market for pro audio apps very small. Unless Google start setting audio latency requirements, it's a lost cause. http://superpowered.com/latency http://superpowered.com/latency
- tragic 8y agoIt's a real shame for bedroom producers like me, I've got a disposable income but not a spare grand for an iPad pro (plus I'm an apple anti-fan :-D ). If Google had sorted out the audio story earlier, you might still have had problems with commodity tablets, but it might have been worth somebody's while to make a tablet specifically for audio and midi. It wouldn't be a million miles away from Maschine or something like that. But I fear the opportunity's gone now, and Android tablets are just a write off. I still have my Nexus 7 which I basically use as a Kindle.
- pjmlp 8y agoThose requirements do exist, but only for Android 8 devices, which aren't that many. Otherwise only Samsung devices are usable, with their own real time audio SDK.
- StreamBright 8y agoMaybe it is just me but Android got gradually worse over time, bloated with useless features that are the first thing that I turn off on my new devices usually. It is still impossible to find certain basic functionality in the setup, which drives my nuts every single time I have to find them. It would be worth to visualise how much effort is to turn off spell correction on different mobile devices and use change other basic parameters and compare it to iOS.
- oneeyedpigeon 8y agoOn my android phone (Nokia 3, fwiw) that example is trivial: pull down menu, settings, search "spell", "spell checker", "off".
- dcbadacd 8y agoI remember when settings search actually worked. Now a lot is hidden in Google Play Services settings and can't be found.
- muse900 8y agoI agree. 1st table I ever owned was a Nexus 7. I bought it because I was very satisfied with Nexus 5 being my phone (price and stability). The thing that annoyed me the most about Nexus 7 apart from lacking on basic things was its sound... I'd go in an airplane and I wouldn't be able to hear anything. After that I never bought a Nexus product again, and tbh I don't feel left out of anything.
- oneweekwonder 8y ago> basic things was its sound... I'd go in an airplane and I wouldn't be able to hear anything. Was the sound issue also present when you were using headphones? A bit of topic: Because it inconsiderate to use speakers in a airplane. Last airline I used warn passengers to not use speakers.
- muse900 8y agoSorry, I didn't specify it. Yes that was using headphones... who would use speakers on an airplane.
- EpicEng 8y agoYou weren't using headphones on a plane? You know other people don't want to hear your movie, right?
- muse900 8y agoI was using headphones, just forgot to specify it... why you so mad?
- dalbasal 8y agoIn a lot of cases a scaled (or just small) phone app is good enough. But... overall.. I think the tablet category is just not a very big one. I had an iPad and an old 7" nexus. When they died, I didn't replace. Phones got bigger and better. We got better at thumb typing and comfortable holding screens close. Reading on a tablet for example, is not that different to a phone these days and a (cheap) dedicated reader is better still. Meanwhile, laptops kept getting more mobile. The space between my phone and my laptop is just not that big. I found that I only ever charged it before flights, for movies which is great on tablets. But even that.. laptops and phones work good too. Otherwise, my tablets were often battery-dead and I most tablets i come across in friends living rooms are dead. They don't get much use. When a laptop or phone died, I need a new one tomorrow. The tablet... no urgency. Tablets are fun and cool. People like them. I'm not sure they use them as much as they expected to. It's a less extreme version of smart watches. Fun. Likeable. Not essential for most people. The problem is that the android and iOS monoliths (especially sofwarists) will always put the phones first. If we had a less centralised ecosystem, tablets would have their own specialists.
- __sr__ 8y agoI guess that varies from person to person. My iPad Pro, for example, is my most used personal device. I prefer it over my phone whenever possible. In fact, I like phones small - it’s a pain to pull out a brick every time I want to talk. It’s a matter of personal taste, I guess.
- EpicEng 8y ago>It’s a matter of personal taste, I guess. Of course it is, but tablet sales have been declining for years.
- macjohnmcc 8y agoIs it because of the lack of interest or is it because people aren't replacing them because they are still working for them? I haven't lost interest in tablets but I also haven't bought one in four years because mine suits my needs.