4 ms·

SDK shoot-out: Android vs. iPhone

7 points by snydeq 18y ago

ajross 18y ago
Article is mostly fluff. The most specific thing it says about either platform is that "you use Eclipse by default for Android". NDA notwithstanding, I would love to see a hacker-level architecture comparison at some point. Anyone have pointers?
- rcoder 18y ago
  If I may be so biased as to offer my own take: http://rcoder.net/content/contrasting-the-iphone-and-android-development-kits http://rcoder.net/content/contrasting-the-iphone-and-android...
jemmons 18y ago
What a pointless article. It starts with unsupported assertions that Eclipse and Java are better than XCode and ObjC (clearly a matter of opinion as I strongly believe the opposite, but moreover what does that have to do with the SDK?) and ends by actually positing that the different SDKs don't matter at all, thus invalidating the whole premise of the piece. Annoying!
- ardit33 18y ago
  I think the oposite. With Eclipse, you can do what the f. you want. You can build your own plugin, if ADD is not good enough for you. With x-code, I am not sure how extensible is it (is it open source?). Java is way much better and faster to develop than object-c. Problem is run-time speed, (C/C++ are clearly better for games that java), and the second problem is the Android API set is a mess, and bloated. It could have been a lot nicer, but still it way better than Object-C. It allows almost full access to the system. X-Code is a lot more polished, (and prettier), while ADD is ugly, and functional, and more open. Bottom line, depending on your background you might like one or the other, I feel using C/C++ and Object-C is a step backwards, were you have to take care memory managements/leaks, and afraid not to crash the whole phone. While in Android, everything is sandboxed, to minimize risks to the underlying system. Plus there is already android (dalvik vm), running in Symbian, and potentially other OSes down the road. History repeats itself. Few years ago we had the BREW (C++) vs J2ME (Java) battle, and J2ME won by a large margin.
iamdave 18y ago
I love speculation that infers from thin air.
peregrine 18y ago
The main difference is open-ness. Android you can... Share any app you write without approval. Apple you can.... Share any app you write as long as its approved and you pay the fee. So that's the main difference. Android uses Java or anything that can compile down to their byte code. And for Apple you use Objective-C. Overall Android is better for the openess but I say this only from an outside perspective. I downloaded and setup the SDK within Eclipse yesterday and will play with it today.

7 points by snydeq 18y ago

Article is mostly fluff. The most specific thing it says about either platform is that "you use Eclipse by default for Android". NDA notwithstanding, I would love to see a hacker-level architecture comparison at some point. Anyone have pointers?

rcoder 18y ago
If I may be so biased as to offer my own take: http://rcoder.net/content/contrasting-the-iphone-and-android-development-kits http://rcoder.net/content/contrasting-the-iphone-and-android...

jemmons 18y ago

What a pointless article. It starts with unsupported assertions that Eclipse and Java are better than XCode and ObjC (clearly a matter of opinion as I strongly believe the opposite, but moreover what does that have to do with the SDK?) and ends by actually positing that the different SDKs don't matter at all, thus invalidating the whole premise of the piece. Annoying!

ardit33 18y ago
I think the oposite. With Eclipse, you can do what the f. you want. You can build your own plugin, if ADD is not good enough for you. With x-code, I am not sure how extensible is it (is it open source?). Java is way much better and faster to develop than object-c. Problem is run-time speed, (C/C++ are clearly better for games that java), and the second problem is the Android API set is a mess, and bloated. It could have been a lot nicer, but still it way better than Object-C. It allows almost full access to the system. X-Code is a lot more polished, (and prettier), while ADD is ugly, and functional, and more open. Bottom line, depending on your background you might like one or the other, I feel using C/C++ and Object-C is a step backwards, were you have to take care memory managements/leaks, and afraid not to crash the whole phone. While in Android, everything is sandboxed, to minimize risks to the underlying system. Plus there is already android (dalvik vm), running in Symbian, and potentially other OSes down the road. History repeats itself. Few years ago we had the BREW (C++) vs J2ME (Java) battle, and J2ME won by a large margin.

iamdave 18y ago

I love speculation that infers from thin air.

peregrine 18y ago

The main difference is open-ness. Android you can... Share any app you write without approval. Apple you can.... Share any app you write as long as its approved and you pay the fee. So that's the main difference. Android uses Java or anything that can compile down to their byte code. And for Apple you use Objective-C. Overall Android is better for the openess but I say this only from an outside perspective. I downloaded and setup the SDK within Eclipse yesterday and will play with it today.