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>(Adobe and 3rd party toolkits for instance) Flash builder definitely builds for the iOS appstore now. http://www.webkitchen.be/2011/06/20/build-ios-applicati

by gte910h 15y ago

>(Adobe and 3rd party toolkits for instance) Flash builder definitely builds for the iOS appstore now. http://www.webkitchen.be/2011/06/20/build-ios-applications-with-flex-and-flash-builder-4-5-1/ http://www.webkitchen.be/2011/06/20/build-ios-applications-w... Android has some major challenges. Android tablets haven't really "just worked", and have had crippling return rates and price points that do not truly reflect their quality relative to the iPad. Non-standard android builds (aka, the Kindle Fire is a fork of an old, non-tablet based android) are getting more prolific, and hopefully do not fully fragment the market into two. What $14 kindle books are you talking about btw? I've never paid more than $10 that I noticed. Another issue is Android is becoming the gateway drug to smartphones, instead of holding share, a huge number of people buy it for their first app wielding smart phone, then step over to apple for the second. They need to become more "the windows to mac"(works okay, but has hairs, standardized) instead of the "Desktop linux to mac" (can customize anything, but all over the place and confusing to non-technical people), and I feel they're still hovering much closer to the second category there than the first. Additionally, you should probably be classifying the 5" "tablets" such as the Galaxy S into the same market as smartphones, as well as the iPodTouch, for the purposes of looking at things like app sales. They are in some ways more important, because their dominent purpose is consumption, instead of phone calls.

JohnTHaller 15y ago
Right, it does build for it now. But Apple excluded Adobe's Flash builder specifically for quite some time and built in a "no 3rd party toolkits" clause just to exclude it. Of course, they then realized that this would also kill off many of the popular games on iOS, so they were forced to relent. They still block flash and all alternative browsers (settling instead for just pretty 'chrome' over Mobile Safari and calling them 'browsers' in their store), so there's still that issue. The ebook issue is well-known now and is the reason that many ebooks are more expensive than their paper equivalents despite having near-zero transportation costs, no warehousing costs, no storefront costs, no production costs after the first one, no ability to resell so no used market, etc. Some details, including Steve Jobs' quote showing he knew exactly what was happening, are here: http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/891584-264/apple_and_big_publishers_conspired.html.csp http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/891584-264/apple_and_b... Android tablets based on Honeycomb are quite good now and I have a couple friends that are using them, one of whom ditched his top-model iPad for it after ditching his iPhone for a Samsung Galaxy 2. Personally, I'd wait on Ice Cream Sandwich - aka Android 4, due out next month - as that'll be the point that both the tablet and phone versions of Android are in sync and open source (Android 3.x isn't yet open source like Android 2.x is).

by gte910h 15y ago

JohnTHaller 15y ago

Right, it does build for it now. But Apple excluded Adobe's Flash builder specifically for quite some time and built in a "no 3rd party toolkits" clause just to exclude it. Of course, they then realized that this would also kill off many of the popular games on iOS, so they were forced to relent. They still block flash and all alternative browsers (settling instead for just pretty 'chrome' over Mobile Safari and calling them 'browsers' in their store), so there's still that issue. The ebook issue is well-known now and is the reason that many ebooks are more expensive than their paper equivalents despite having near-zero transportation costs, no warehousing costs, no storefront costs, no production costs after the first one, no ability to resell so no used market, etc. Some details, including Steve Jobs' quote showing he knew exactly what was happening, are here: http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/891584-264/apple_and_big_publishers_conspired.html.csp http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/891584-264/apple_and_b... Android tablets based on Honeycomb are quite good now and I have a couple friends that are using them, one of whom ditched his top-model iPad for it after ditching his iPhone for a Samsung Galaxy 2. Personally, I'd wait on Ice Cream Sandwich - aka Android 4, due out next month - as that'll be the point that both the tablet and phone versions of Android are in sync and open source (Android 3.x isn't yet open source like Android 2.x is).