Ah, irony. It's more than a little amusing that the people writing the software need to be "encouraged" to use the platform that's more popular (by shipments).
Even in the days of Mac-vs-Windows, it wasn't really true that developers needed to be encouraged to write code for Windows. They migrated to the more popular platform, because that's where the action was. But these days, the action is in iOS, and Android is a clear second-tier player (amongst developers). The fact that Android is shipping more units is almost incidental.
In software, this pattern is historically kind of weird, but in consumer products, it's par for the course -- new innovations come out in high-end products, and eventually filter down to the masses. Perhaps this is a sign that software is finally becoming a commodity industry.
> It's more than a little amusing that the people writing the software need to be "encouraged" to use the platform that's more popular
It's not too surprising, though. The Valley has long been enamored with Apple and Steve Jobs - the Reality Distortion Field has been most effective on those who really should know better. Android's dominance in the smartphone market has only served to reinforce their feelings of superiority and elitism vis-à-vis the common man.
And contrary to what you say, this applies to Windows vs. Mac as well. Macs are dominant in the Valley, which is quite the aberration in a world where Windows has around 90% of the PC market. When people in the Valley sing the praises of the web for its cross-platform nature, what they actually mean is that they can use Macs while still targeting the Windows market.
This hypocrisy becomes evident in their complete lack of cross-platform support when it comes to the mobile market, since they just stick to iOS. Moreover, one of the biggest advantages touted about iOS is the wide variety of games available for it. But the same people praising iOS for all its games are running Macs, which can run hardly any games compared to Windows.
Macs have only been dominant in Silicon Valley for about 5 or 6 years. Really, only since the switch to Intel, that's to say, once they reached parity on specs. Between 1995 and 2005 you could have gone into almost any office in Silicon Valley and found few if any non-Windows computers, and if you did, they were more likely to be Suns than Apples.
> their feelings of superiority and elitism vis-à-vis the common man
> hypocrisy
I really think you should take a step back from Apple news and relax. If the Silicon Valley is doing it wrong, then go and exploit this imbalance to boost your business. Judging people for their OS choices is not productive.
> But these days, the action is in iOS, and Android is a clear second-tier player (amongst developers). The fact that Android is shipping more units is almost incidental.
Really? Incidental? For an app that makes money by sales, I'd agree with you, since Apple has proven possible that more money is to be made from a smaller market segment if that smaller market segment is more willing to pay.
But in the case of Facebook and other such businesses where volume and ubiquity is key, it is incumbent for them to nudge developers to be more adept in a platform like Android. While FB users on Android will still visit FB, even if the app is inferior, I think FB's business depends on Android users being as attracted to FB as possible...not just when they get home to their desktop Macs.
In other words, why should a company let its developers be complacent with getting to use the best gadget, if the company's strategy is to dominate the global consciousness?
Just wanted to clarify a bit more than what the article mentions. Not only do Android devices allow you to install an app from an .apk you downloaded (or copied to sd card, or emailed as attachment to yourself, or put in your dropbox, or sent over usb through adb, etc etc), there are more app marketplaces than just Google Play.
That article mentions Amazon appstore (free premium app every day anyone?), but there are many others. https://f-droid.org/ is one I always use (it contains free/open-source apps only), and I guess mikandi (an adult app store) is still around.
First, there is the question of where Android's growth is. Apple is clearly going for the $200 price point on-contract. Yes, they sell their old models, but Android has a more diverse ecosystem. If we limited ourselves to equivalents (the top of the line iPhone and the several top of the line Android devices (Nexus 4, One X, GS III, etc.)) would there be so many more Android shipments? So, Android's shipments might be coming more on the low-end: the end that people like us don't purchase from as much.
Second, in the Mac vs. Windows era, there was a significant price disparity. If you're in the market for a top-of-the-line smartphone on-contract today, you're likely paying $200 for an Android phone or iPhone. Windows computers always had a significant price discount over equivalent Macs.
Third, in the Mac vs. Windows era, Macs often were under-spec'd. While Apple tried to make the best of the 603-G5 processors, Intel was just on a roll. You'd pay more and end up with less muscle. Today, the iPhone's A6 matches the quad-cores that Americans haven't been getting since LTE took precedence over quad-core in the GS III generation.
Fourth, in the Mac vs. PC era, Macs were technologically inferior for many years. I'm specifically talking about the Classic Mac OS. Mac OS 8/9 was beautiful. Windows looked like it was designed in crayon by comparison (to me). However, its cooperative multitasking was just sad. Windows 95 really showed that OSs could be better (even if I thought that its UI was sub-par). When OS X and Windows XP came out, OS X was dog-slow - slow to the point of unusable. Apple really improved it and made it into the OS that many of us (myself included) love today. However, I remember 2001 and how envious I was of Windows users.
Fifth, in the Mac vs. PC era, Macs were app-poor. There was just a lot of compelling stuff that you couldn't run as a Mac user. The move toward the web changed a lot of that and left Apple with a great way back into the market. With the iPhone, I find that the iPhone does a better job on web pages than Android (note, I haven't used Android 4.1 and 4.2). Stats on web usage on mobile phones seem to bear this out as iPhone web browsing tends to dominate Android web browsing. Likewise, the iPhone at least matches Android on apps, but I think it could be argued to be the primary platform for apps. So, there isn't a penalty to using an iPhone in the way that there was a penalty to using a Mac in the Mac vs. PC era.
Basically, the iPhone isn't more expensive at the top-of-the-line, the iPhone has specs that no one would deny are top of the line, iOS isn't an inferior OS (personal preference about certain features aside), and there isn't a penalty to using iOS (if anything, it could be considered the first platform). None of this is meant to say that the iPhone is better than an Android phone. I don't care what you enjoy using. It's meant to demonstrate that iOS doesn't have the same cost premium, that if we limit ourselves to the devices that people like us buy the marketshare disparity might not be there, that even if iOS is a minority platform it still gets as good attention or better from developers, the specs are equivalent which they weren't in computers for a long time, and iOS and Android are both great modern OSs. If you were an early adopter, iOS came a couple years before Android.
In the Mac vs. PC era, Windows was more popular not just because popularity breeds popularity. It was hugely cheaper, better spec'd, and a superior OS for a good while. If you loved computing, Apple's tidyness might have been well out-shadowed by Windows 95's multi-tasking, app availability, price, specs, etc. If you like iOS, why choose an Android device as your next phone? No reason really. Similarly, there aren't compelling reasons if you like Android to buy an iPhone - Android phones today have high-res displays, are starting to get serious on build quality, similar specs, etc. It wasn't hard to convince a Mac user in 2000 to switch to Windows: you got a better OS, more apps, a faster computer, for half the price. I could convince people to switch to Windows with good, logical arguments that really rang true. Today, how would you convince an iPhone user to switch to Android? I'm not saying Android is bad, just that it's a lot harder to make that argument.
I think there's another big reason: Facebook employees tended to be early adopters, and bought into smartphone back when iOS really was clearly the better platform. And then either got locked in to the ecosystem, developed brand loyalty, chose the path of least resistance, or just didn't notice when android became a worthy competitor. There are lots of good reasons to use an iPhone now if your first iPhone was four years ago. Fewer if your first smartphone is this year.
Step back and think here. Facebook has 800 million active users. Their major competition and growth opportunities will not be in the USA, they will be in China and emerging countries.
It's far from obvious in this bubble here, but these people are overwhelmingly not buying Apple devices. They simply can't afford them.
The headline is misleading, they're encouraging more employees to use Android, but not encouraging everyone to switch. I'm not sure if it has changed since 2010, but when I was with the company you could choose between iPhone or BlackBerry as a company phone. The lack of Android choices was directly responsible IMHO for the Android app sucking.
I think it was intentional.
"Facebook urged its employees in August to switch from iOS devices to Android so that flaws in the company’s mobile app could be addressed more rapidly."
That statement was ironic. Satire, anyone? Maybe that's the reason why my FB app on Android is getting better? LOL
Google Plus' iPad app sucks to the bottom...... now I wonder what's the correlation...
Part of the problem is that there isn't just one Android, there are many, and they all behave just slightly differently. Testing on Android is a nightmare because of this.
I wish Google would make some efforts at fixing this problem -- it's the same problem Microsoft had with Windows. Windows on each piece of hardware was just slightly different and made testing just as hard.
Google, please learn Microsoft's lesson and make this easier for developers.
> Part of the problem is that there isn't just one Android, there are many, and they all behave just slightly differently. Testing on Android is a nightmare because of this.
In my experience, this issue is overblown, especially with Android 4.0+. Unless you're developing a game, the hardware differences should not be a huge concern. The Facebook app certainly shouldn't have problems because of this.
> I wish Google would make some efforts at fixing this problem
Google has and can have no control over how Android is implemented or updated by various OEMs, particularly when carriers are dictating terms. And when Google tries to go around the carriers, like they did with the Nexus 4, they get crucified for the lack of LTE. Seems to me they're between a rock and a hard place. Hopefully their plan to launch a wireless carrier with Dish Network will pan out and things will get better.
Testing a few hundred devices ranging in age from 1 to 4 years old on Android isn't great. Where it becomes a tough pill to swallow is when you compare it relatively to the iOS experience.
The number of devices are just a fraction, users update almost instantly and the older devices have a matching ratio for screen size. You also get the added bonus of nearly all apple products having a planned obsolescence of about two years.
Are you saying that you personally test on hundreds of devices, or just that you saw a photo of a huge table full of phones on a blog once and heard that someone somewhere does that? No one does that. It's a dumb argument, stop it.
Is testing on Android more expensive and occasionally more error prone than on iOS? Sure. But make the case sanely with real evidence, please. This is just flaming.
My previous company had dozens of devices to approximate the hundreds (we had our own pictures of tables littered with android phones). They faced ridiculous issues like HTTP not being properly supported. Don't delude yourself into thinking testing android devices is something that it is not. It is a mess. You cannot guarantee your application will work without testing on a device and the devices vary, greatly.
That is all beside the point. My salient issue was that despite testing android devices being a mess, people are proclaiming testing android to be a fucking disaster because they compare it to what testing iOS devices entails. Everything in life is relative. If iOS didn't exist, everyone would be saying testing mobile is a lot like testing web. I'm not saying iOS is better, if that is what ruffled your feathers. I am saying it is a closed platform, specifically for hardware. That makes the story much simpler. Anecdotally, I don't know a QA that has to test for iOS and android that doesn't wish android didn't exist.
We test on 47 different handsets, comprising four different Android versions. Do you want a list?
Our Android app lags in features and reliability to our iPhone app because our devs have to spend so much time dealing with the problems of the fragmented marketplace, so there is less time to innovate. This isn't flaming, it's fact.
Not sure if you know this but most apps are games. So that's a bit funny to say "this isn't an issue unless your making a game".
And I'm also not sure what you work on, but testing on an Android is a nightmare. Most of the issues on apps for Android are (My XYZ phone the app doesn't work). Just go through and read them, that's mostly what the issue is.
> Google has and can have no control over how Android is implemented or updated by various OEMs
Yes it does, it's Google's OS it has complete control over what people do with it.
> Not sure if you know this but most apps are games
This article is about the facebook app.
> Yes it does, it's Google's OS it has complete control over what people do with it.
Not really, AOSP is open source. Too much control would have brought forks, not now though which is why google is enforcing licensing for people who to use the Android market.
No, Android is open source. Google has no control over what people do with it. The only thing google can control is if their branding shows up on the phone.
Amazon for instance uses it without any of the google branding and the open source license means They don't have to consult with Google at all. So your final sentence is 100% false.
I feel like the reason I prefer Android is because it's so faceted, and available for anyone to use to adopt for whatever use-case. I've owned an mp3 player that uses Android as a base, and I think it's being used in appliance dashboards and whatnot. That Android was built with this in mind leads it to be naturally harder to test for.
And while testing in Android isn't braindead easy, they have done a lot to make it easier on developers, from providing a really good emulator with images of all the various android versions, to having APIs designed to do feature detection, and have documented best practices to handling different sized/oriented layouts.
Maybe somebody should build a startup that creates a bridge between hardware owners and software developers. Let device owners have a client that downloads and runs test cases in exchange for money/points/lulz, paid for by developers wishing to support that hardware.
That's somewhat true, but it sounds like one of the goals is to get general feedback on the Android platform and its ecosystem of apps as well. For example, Path does a beautiful job using rich notifications in 4.1 (you see the uploaded photo in the actual notification), but Facebook isn't. Getting a broad set of feedback into product direction is helpful beyond just bug reports and testing.
Android will soon be the linux of the client-side world. Ubiquitous, cheap OS. Facebook HQ wants to get into all Android devices, not just the mobile phones, hence the push on their employees. "eat your own dog food" is a good strategy for any software house.
Given that Microsoft investment in Facebook [1] I am a bit surprised there isn't more interplay there. Seems WinPhone could use a killer Facebook app, kind of a win/win for the investor.
Can you say a bit more about that? I am interested in how Facebook creating a killer product for one of their strategic investors can be construed as 'interference' ?
Facebook already integrates with Microsoft products: Bing is a search option on their site, and all of their embedded maps (Events, etc) use Bing Maps.
On the MSFT side, Windows Phone has always included deep integration with Facebook since the start, and their most recent acquisition, Skype, is the provider of video chat for Facebook's in-browser client.
Both companies already integrate with each other in multiple areas, and Facebook employees almost certainly aren't discouraged from using WP7/8 on their personal devices. The market realities (low market share, existing integration in the OS with no standalone, third party app to support) means that there's no need to push this on employees over iOS/Android.
Facebook will of course integrate Microsoft products with Facebook and vice versa. But that shouldn't stop them from offering Facebook to other platforms. And to do that well, they need to use and work with those other platforms. It wouldn't be a good idea for Microsoft to interfere in that department.
Even in the days of Mac-vs-Windows, it wasn't really true that developers needed to be encouraged to write code for Windows. They migrated to the more popular platform, because that's where the action was. But these days, the action is in iOS, and Android is a clear second-tier player (amongst developers). The fact that Android is shipping more units is almost incidental.
In software, this pattern is historically kind of weird, but in consumer products, it's par for the course -- new innovations come out in high-end products, and eventually filter down to the masses. Perhaps this is a sign that software is finally becoming a commodity industry.