

Did we at any point say it was a nightmare developing on Android? It wasn't. - minalecs
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/10/androids-champions-defend-os-against-steve-jobs/

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minalecs
Steve should of actually talked to Android developers of major apps before
making these claims.

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foobarbazetc
Why? Developing for Android is a pain in the arse, especially once you're done
and testing in the field.

There are hundreds of devices, all different, all with their own bugs and all
running different versions of the OS to deal with. This is J2ME all over
again.

That doesn't mean it's impossible, it just means it takes longer. It also
means you need to go out and buy a tonne of development/testing phones.

All of the above might be okay for people with money and/or investment, but
makes it difficult for small developers. Let's not even begin to talk about
the Android Market, supported seller/buyer countries, currency display, return
policies, etc, etc.

Compare that to iOS -- Apple rolls out an update to the OS, it works on all
devices, and they're all identical. There's far less testing required (version
N, N-1), and far less hardware investment too. You pop your app up on the App
Store and it all 'just works'. That's what Steve is talking about --
integration vs fragmentation.

~~~
codingthewheel
Yeah, fortunately this is not how software works in practice. The best example
is probably the PC market, which is fragmented to such a degree that the
hardware permutations are uncountable -- and yet Windows, Linux, other major
operating systems and applications all manage to deliver stable, consistent
user experiences. The situation with Android is parallel: lots of different
hardware, but basically still a "write once, run everywhere" environment.
(Everywhere being any phone with a legit Android environment.) Similarly to
when you're developing on a PC, you _occasionally_ need to know something
about the specific hardware or version you're running against, but more often
than not, you just code, and it just works.

~~~
msy
Mobile is a different ball game. To start with, while hardware is more varied
it's also got far more standardised input hardware - there's a keyboard and
there's a mouse and you can rely on that being the primary input.

On Android there will be a touch screen, but it's size, resolution and
accuracy will vary. There may be buttons but their quantity and makeup will
vary.

The second factor is that you cannot get away with bad UI as much as you can
on the desktop. On the desktop it's frustrating but survivable, on mobile it's
a death knell.

It'd be more accurate to call it write once, run poorly everywhere.

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konad
CEO states rival product is worse than the one his business sells, Film at 11.

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codingthewheel
How hard is it to run spellcheck before publishing an article for half a
million readers?

    
    
      compile Android on a home Linux machin--a way

