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To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if there was any preference to the platform. The marketshare of iOS is 25% and Android is 38%[1]. In that 25% almost all i

by ancarda 13y ago

To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if there was any preference to the platform. The marketshare of iOS is 25% and Android is 38%[1]. In that 25% almost all iOS users have a consistent screen size, DPI and even OS version. Any changes (think of Retina display in iOS 4), the OS handles transparently. The fragmentation of Android makes it a lot more work to support. Additionally, there's only one store; The App Store. Android has Google Play, Amazon's Store and possibly a dozen more. iOS in my opinion has much richer tools (Xcode, Instruments, Simulator) to develop with too. I should point out as an iOS developer, I don't exactly have extensive knowledge of Android. If there are rich tools to deal with fragmentation in a seamless way, please let me know. I'd be interested to see how it stacks up to developing for iOS. I can only speak anecdotally about iOS vs Android but I'm preparing to launch a startup this summer, we're going to have an iOS app but not an Android app until later this year. The primary reason would be we're extremely limited for time and money and the last thing we need is testing the app on 50 different phones just to find the UI doesn't fit on some of them and the performance is sub-par on some. What a pain. Our testing is conducted entirely on our personal iPhones (2x iPhone 5, 1x iPhone 4) along with the simulator and that works out as completely sufficient. The experience we get in the palm of our hands is guaranteed to be almost identical to potentially millions of users. I can see why there would possibly be a preference. It's a dream to develop for this platform. [1] http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-monthly-201205-201305 http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-monthly-201205-20130...

josteink 13y ago
Feel proud about your stance. You are in good company. I'm sure people said the very same thing as they made 1024x768 MSIE-only websites.
- ancarda 13y ago
  We want to break into Android as soon as we can but right now there's a lower barrier to entry for iOS apps regarding testing & development. It's also convenient we happened to have Macs to develop on. If we were using Windows or Linux, we'd likely be developing for Windows Phone and Android. As for "1024x768 MSIE-only websites", while that's a great analogy, I should point out the entire web is "unpredictable" like that; everyone has a different resolution, browser and OS where as iOS is fixed which is what makes it attractive to develop for in this circumstance. When IE had 90% marketshare I'm sure plenty of people developed using it's specific APIs. What would you rather have done? Incase your interested, our website is an HTML 5 responsive site that requires IE 8+.
- koffiezet 13y ago
  You can hardly say iOS supports only one resolution now can you? Thing is - Apple dictates certain limitations AND provides the tools and api's to make it more convenient to support those different resolutions and dpi. On Android you not only have to worry about resolution and dpi, which you could do on simulators, but you also have to take into account which display technology is used. Text on pentile displays can look horrible on the real device, while looking perfect on the "same resolution" in a simulator (real world story here). That and designing a good UI which's size is dictated by an unpredictable aspect ratio, size (resolution + DPI) is bloody hard. Just look at the total lack of tablet apps for Android. So yes, if a developer pours the same effort into an Android app as it does in an iOS app, you get poor results. Welcome to the real world.

by ancarda 13y ago

josteink 13y ago

Feel proud about your stance. You are in good company. I'm sure people said the very same thing as they made 1024x768 MSIE-only websites.

ancarda 13y ago
We want to break into Android as soon as we can but right now there's a lower barrier to entry for iOS apps regarding testing & development. It's also convenient we happened to have Macs to develop on. If we were using Windows or Linux, we'd likely be developing for Windows Phone and Android. As for "1024x768 MSIE-only websites", while that's a great analogy, I should point out the entire web is "unpredictable" like that; everyone has a different resolution, browser and OS where as iOS is fixed which is what makes it attractive to develop for in this circumstance. When IE had 90% marketshare I'm sure plenty of people developed using it's specific APIs. What would you rather have done? Incase your interested, our website is an HTML 5 responsive site that requires IE 8+.
koffiezet 13y ago
You can hardly say iOS supports only one resolution now can you? Thing is - Apple dictates certain limitations AND provides the tools and api's to make it more convenient to support those different resolutions and dpi. On Android you not only have to worry about resolution and dpi, which you could do on simulators, but you also have to take into account which display technology is used. Text on pentile displays can look horrible on the real device, while looking perfect on the "same resolution" in a simulator (real world story here). That and designing a good UI which's size is dictated by an unpredictable aspect ratio, size (resolution + DPI) is bloody hard. Just look at the total lack of tablet apps for Android. So yes, if a developer pours the same effort into an Android app as it does in an iOS app, you get poor results. Welcome to the real world.