4 ms·

ask themselves if they would prefer if every device would go the "Apple way" and make their very own operating systems for their device. That's not a question

by Steko 13y ago

ask themselves if they would prefer if every device would go the "Apple way" and make their very own operating systems for their device. That's not a question it's a straw man. The real question is whether Android would have been better served by Google withholding their closed source services unless devices met some additional standards on dimensions and software updates. I make one and then adapt a little if necessary. This is disingenuous. The whole point of people complaining about Android fragmentation is that you don't adapt a little. You adapt relatively a lot vs iOS which is a bigger market in dollars.

kin3tic 13y ago
Ooh I know, or they could release UI APIs that make it trivial for devs to build apps the right way rather than encouraging them to hardcode pixel perfect layouts and then slowly introducing more form factors over the next N years.
bookwormAT 13y ago
"you don't adapt a little." Adapt from one of two not android based systems to another, for example from iOS to Windows Phone. Now adapt from one android-based OS to another, e.g. from the Galaxy S "Nature OS" to HTC Sense. Compared to the former, the latter only needs to adapt a little. Android did not make users buy multiple devices. Android did not make users buy into different operating systems. Android just makes different operating systems compatible to another.
- spotman 13y ago
  re: "compatible to another" - this is definitely not always the case. it certainly may be the intention, but is not always the case. Random example: http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.handhelds.phonegap/36310 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.handhelds.phonegap/3631... I work for a very popular cross platform mobile application (ios, blackberry, android), and we have dozens and dozens of test devices, a qa department just dedicated to finding differences between devices, and let me tell you that most of the time, special tweaks are required for android that are not required for ios. Surely this is hugely due to the fact that there is less variety in the ios world, but you simply wont find that "manufacturer xyz decided to implement this differently so now the developer must account for that". Finally, in your analogy of adapting from Android->Android, is similar to adapting from say ios5->ios6. Having been through this several times now, I can tell you with confidence that the initial time of adapting is very similar with equally skilled developers, but the delta of "code complete" to "ready to ship" is much larger on android, due to all of the testing, double-checking, and edge cases. So in summary I would say that you do "adapt a little" with ios, but you end up adapting a lot more than a little for android, if you want to support more than a couple phones, in my opinion.
  - cpncrunch 13y ago
    I've found that ios is a lot worse regarding fragmentation than Android. While Android requires a bit more legwork at the beginning, once you have written the app it will generally keep working on most devices. There aren't too many changes in new Android versions that break things. iOS however is a horrendous mess. Every year or two they overhaul their layout system (contentScalingFactor, then auto-layout, and other things). Also, each time a new version of iOS comes out you need to work around various bugs/changes and you end up tweaking/hacking your code to get it working on all devices. I've just spent an entire day getting one of our apps working on the ipad in iOS 7, and another half day getting it working on iphone. It will require another day or two to get everything working perfectly, and then I'll have to recreate all the new icons, launch images, screenshots, etc.
- weland 13y ago
  > Now adapt from one android-based OS to another, e.g. from the Galaxy S "Nature OS" to HTC Sense. No, no. Play fair: adapt from Samsung Galaxy 580 to the Asus Transformer Pad TF300TL, ensuring that your interface actually looks OK on both of these and on every device in-between -- that includes the Xperia V, the Asus PadFone and the HTC One X. And no cheating here -- when a customer complains that the application "looks funny" on his phone, don't forget to factor in the price of buying the damn thing. Have you actually written a real Android application? Maintaining a list of differences between devices (and the hacks you need to make just to make a program written for the same fsckin platform work on all those devices) is a part-time job in itself.
  - bookwormAT 13y ago
    I have written Android applications before, and I still believe that adapting from Samsung Galaxy 580 to the Asus Transformer Pad TF300TL is significantly less work than adapting from iPhone to Transformer Pad TF300TL.

by Steko 13y ago

kin3tic 13y ago

Ooh I know, or they could release UI APIs that make it trivial for devs to build apps the right way rather than encouraging them to hardcode pixel perfect layouts and then slowly introducing more form factors over the next N years.

bookwormAT 13y ago

"you don't adapt a little." Adapt from one of two not android based systems to another, for example from iOS to Windows Phone. Now adapt from one android-based OS to another, e.g. from the Galaxy S "Nature OS" to HTC Sense. Compared to the former, the latter only needs to adapt a little. Android did not make users buy multiple devices. Android did not make users buy into different operating systems. Android just makes different operating systems compatible to another.

spotman 13y ago
re: "compatible to another" - this is definitely not always the case. it certainly may be the intention, but is not always the case. Random example: http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.handhelds.phonegap/36310 http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.handhelds.phonegap/3631... I work for a very popular cross platform mobile application (ios, blackberry, android), and we have dozens and dozens of test devices, a qa department just dedicated to finding differences between devices, and let me tell you that most of the time, special tweaks are required for android that are not required for ios. Surely this is hugely due to the fact that there is less variety in the ios world, but you simply wont find that "manufacturer xyz decided to implement this differently so now the developer must account for that". Finally, in your analogy of adapting from Android->Android, is similar to adapting from say ios5->ios6. Having been through this several times now, I can tell you with confidence that the initial time of adapting is very similar with equally skilled developers, but the delta of "code complete" to "ready to ship" is much larger on android, due to all of the testing, double-checking, and edge cases. So in summary I would say that you do "adapt a little" with ios, but you end up adapting a lot more than a little for android, if you want to support more than a couple phones, in my opinion.
- cpncrunch 13y ago
  I've found that ios is a lot worse regarding fragmentation than Android. While Android requires a bit more legwork at the beginning, once you have written the app it will generally keep working on most devices. There aren't too many changes in new Android versions that break things. iOS however is a horrendous mess. Every year or two they overhaul their layout system (contentScalingFactor, then auto-layout, and other things). Also, each time a new version of iOS comes out you need to work around various bugs/changes and you end up tweaking/hacking your code to get it working on all devices. I've just spent an entire day getting one of our apps working on the ipad in iOS 7, and another half day getting it working on iphone. It will require another day or two to get everything working perfectly, and then I'll have to recreate all the new icons, launch images, screenshots, etc.
weland 13y ago
> Now adapt from one android-based OS to another, e.g. from the Galaxy S "Nature OS" to HTC Sense. No, no. Play fair: adapt from Samsung Galaxy 580 to the Asus Transformer Pad TF300TL, ensuring that your interface actually looks OK on both of these and on every device in-between -- that includes the Xperia V, the Asus PadFone and the HTC One X. And no cheating here -- when a customer complains that the application "looks funny" on his phone, don't forget to factor in the price of buying the damn thing. Have you actually written a real Android application? Maintaining a list of differences between devices (and the hacks you need to make just to make a program written for the same fsckin platform work on all those devices) is a part-time job in itself.
- bookwormAT 13y ago
  I have written Android applications before, and I still believe that adapting from Samsung Galaxy 580 to the Asus Transformer Pad TF300TL is significantly less work than adapting from iPhone to Transformer Pad TF300TL.