
Android is for startups - willwhitney
http://blog.audobox.com/android-is-for-startups/
======
zmmmmm
A lot of people seem to be missing the main point here. I don't think the
article is actually advocating developing for Android and NOT iOS. I don't
think it is even particularly advocating releasing on Android first. However
_starting_ your development on Android - as your first way of prototyping and
finding your MVP - gives you a tremendous amount of agility and flexibility.
You can create as many APKs as you want, send them to whoever you want without
any fuss and they can test them out. You can fix bugs or implement features
for just one person and send them the APK the same day. You can integrate your
app with the OS and other apps in ways that are impossible on iOS to find what
really works and matters to your users. And you can do all this for virtually
zero cost on commodity hardware with free tools.

In other words, even if you believe iOS is ultimately going to be your primary
platform, there's _still_ a strong argument to do your initial prototyping and
development on Android.

~~~
threeseed
None of what you said makes sense.

Firstly on iOS you can send as many IPAs as I want to friends, testers,
colleagues etc provided I've gone through the 30s process of adding them to
Apple's list. This isn't some giant inconvenience that warrants completely
switching a platform.

Secondly if your app is intended to be cross platform. Then why would you
start creating OS specific functionality you know will never work on the other
platform. It's completely illogical.

iOS is likely to remain the primary platform for prototyping. Why ? Because it
is just so much nicer. The iOS Simulator "just works" and exactly mirrors your
target devices. Not the pathetic joke that comes with the Android SDK which
has no relation to how your app will run on a Samsung versus HTC devices.

~~~
slewis
My company has prototyped on both platforms, and I strongly prefer Android for
this purpose. Test flight is significantly more inconvenient for all parties
than sending around Android apks. So is Apple's provisioning process for
development (you'll certainly have to figure out how to re-provision your
development devices a few times).

Android's OS integration also makes for better demos of our app. Since it's a
remote control for another device it makes a lot of sense to have lock-screen
and pull-down controls. We can't show that off on iOS.

Finally, the Android developers that I know simply don't use the simulator,
they always use hardware. I found it strange coming from iOS, but I've gotten
used to it. I weight this negative much lower than the deployment advantages
that Android has for prototyping.

Of course in the end you'll have apps on both platforms, but here's a vote for
doing early development on Android.

~~~
nucleardog
I love Android. I really only develop for Android. But to say the Android
emulators are better than the iOS simulator (or even comparable) is hilarious
to me.

The reason everyone tests on hardware is because the emulator is %@$#ing slow.
i7 @ 4.2GHz, 12 GB of RAM... the emulator still takes MINUTES to start and
runs unusably slow.

The iOS Simulator on the MBP work gave me (mid-2010) runs at basically native
speed.

I do some development with Cordova. During development I either test on my
Android phone or an iOS simulator. Those are the only realistic options.

~~~
wldlyinaccurate
With regards to the speed, that's because the Android emulator is an
_emulator_ \- it's converting ARM instructions to x86. Because of this, the
Android emulator is actually a better representation of how apps run on real
hardware than the iOS _simulator_.

There are x86 images available for the Android emulator, which will run as
fast as your host machine will allow.

~~~
threeseed
Does real hardware convert x86 to ARM ?

No. So remind me again what your point is ?

~~~
wldlyinaccurate
What? I can't tell if you're trolling, but I'll answer anyway...

The Android emulator allows you to run applications that were _compiled for
ARM_ because it translates the ARM instructions to x86. This is really CPU
intensive and can eat a lot of memory as well.

Technologies like Intel HAXM[0] speed this up, which is how the x86 Android
images manage to be so much faster than the regular ARM images.

[0]: [http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-hardware-
acce...](http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-hardware-accelerated-
execution-manager/)

------
discostrings
Being in the process of registering my LLC for an iOS Apple Developer account,
I couldn't agree more. It's been over two months now of back-and-forth with
Apple and Dun & Bradstreet, and the end is still not in sight. All I'd like
them to do is take my $100 and give me the ability to test the free app I'm
making on a device and then publish it, but apparently Apple feels a longer-
than-two-month turnaround time is acceptable. (And yes, I know I could just
register a personal account and then slowly convert it to an LLC account. I
shouldn't have to do that. As someone who's somewhat interested in their
platform but not dying to develop for it, I'm not going to do that.)

~~~
jeena
I have my own company and wanted to do the same. Sadly for Swedish companies
you have to be a "Aktiebolaget", you need to be on the stockmarket, to be able
to have your company name in the App store.

My options waere to either invest about $8000 to become a AB or open a LLC in
UK while living in Sweden. After half a year of trying and failing I just gave
up and stopped developing for iOS.

Now I just started developing for Firefox OS and hope for the best. My first
app is even on the Marketplace already:
[https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/feedmonkey/](https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/feedmonkey/)

~~~
hrydgard
Starting an AB does not mean that you're "on the stock market", it's just an
LLC, you'll own all the shares yourself privately. You could also start an
"Enskild firma" which doesn't cost much and requires no 50K SEK bound capital.

~~~
jeena
Ah ok, thanks for the clearification. I already have a "Enskild firma" and
they don't allow them in the AppStore.

------
chetanahuja
Lots of "Android apps are no good" chiming in going on here. I've been an iOS
user since the week after the first iPhone came out and still am (due to an
iPad mini). But gave up on iOS for my phone because I can't find the following
apps on iOS.

1) Alternate Launcher with pretty much infinite flexibility on look and feel.

2) Swype like keyboard options. Typing anything on iOS now feels like I
travelled back in time to horse-and-buggy era.

3) Tasker app. Enough said.

4) Google Now. Enough said.

5) This is not an app per se, but the "share with" option for pictures etc
that simply let me chose any suitable app on the phone that lets me share that
particular object using pretty much any means of sharing out there.

And this is not even counting all the hacker'y goodness of having a full root
shell with an almost complete debian environment on my Nexus devices. No
"jailbreak" required. Nexus devices are rootable by design.

If you call yourself a hacker (this is hacker news... right?) and have turned
your nose up at Android so far, you're simply missing out on the future of
portable devices. iOS is catered to non-technical consumers and its feature-
set (both for users as well as for developers) is accordingly restricted. The
future killer apps are being written for Android today and you're not aware of
what a mobile device is (and should be) capable of today and by extension,
tomorrow.

[Edit: 1, 2 and 3 in that list above are paid apps btw. Checkout out the
install numbers for those three on the play-store. Android developers writing
stuff _for_ Android (and not just copying stale iOS material) are making
plenty of money]

~~~
bad_user
Android is awesome for the way it lets apps interoperate. The "share with"
functionality is just one example and it's not just for photos either. For
example if you have Readability installed, you can "share" the article to
Readability from within both Chrome and Firefox (speaking of which, Firefox
isn't available on iOS because Apple doesn't allow it).

I would like to add to your list the ability to completely block phone calls
and SMS messages from annoying numbers, with no traces left in the phone's
logs. Or the ability to automate your phone settings, depending on time or
location, like turning the data off at 11 p.m. for battery preservation or
turning silent while you're at work.

I don't know if such apps are still banned on iTunes, but it's what made me
switch from an iPhone 3GS to a Galaxy S.

~~~
chetanahuja
I didn't go into details of the Tasker app (#3 on my list), but that's exactly
the context dependent automation I use it for. And yeah, there' no equivalent
for such a broad ranging "device-wide programming" app for iOS. Nor is there
likely to be one given the fundamentally "isolated apps" model of the world
wherein iOS operates.

------
jcromartie
I know that Android users are starved for slick apps that look good and work
well, because I'm one of them (when using my Nexus 7). But as a developer I
know that I can't make money from them.

There is no way forward for (paid) Android apps that can make a living. You
_need_ to sell on iOS in order to make any sort of revenue.

So if your startup is built on a free app, then by all means use Android to
test your idea. But if you want to make things and sell them for money, then
putting up with the App Store model is more than worth the amount of money you
can make compared to Android.

~~~
slantyyz
>> There is no way forward for (paid) Android apps that can make a living. You
need to sell on iOS in order to make any sort of revenue.

Yes, that is kind of sad. As someone who does pay for Android software, I
imagine I'm in the minority. I've got extended family members who balk at the
notion of paying even a dollar for software on Android.

OTOH, I'm curious how many paid apps on the iOS App store actually hit the
break-even point.

~~~
mooreds
As of May 2012, 60% of developers didn't break even.
[http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/05/ios-app-success-is-a-
lo...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/05/ios-app-success-is-a-lottery-
and-60-of-developers-dont-break-even/)

~~~
jcromartie
That's actually fantastic, because it means 40% of developers are breaking
even while only probably 10% of them are making anything decent (just based on
the 90% of everything is crud rule, which seems to hold quite true for mobile
apps).

------
avolcano
> But if you build an app on Android that’s on par with the design quality
> you’re used to on iOS, your users will love you. The press will love you.
> Gizmodo will feature your app just so they’ll have a nice header image for
> their “Android Apps of the Week” post.

That's nice, but will it translate into sales? Probably not, given the horror
stories of Android piracy that seem to come out every few weeks (particularly
in the gaming market).

Of course, many startups profit in hype instead of dollars, so maybe that's
irrelevant.

~~~
opendomain
Android Apss are easier to deploy, but becuase of that, you get bad code - or
WORSE - viruses! There are several Andoid apps that are Malware - there is not
one in Apple App store.

~~~
opendomain
Wow! Bad karma for dissing Android! For the record - my family has every
platform, including Andorid phone, kindle, and set top boxes. I personally had
2 malwares installed on my Galaxy that bricked it. Also there are way too many
apps on Android that ask for information access they should not have - like my
GPS location or contacts info for a game. Andoid needs a little higher bar to
remove this crapware.

~~~
css771
I highly doubt that malware could brick a phone.

------
robbfitzsimmons
As a primarily-iOS user / developer who also has an Android tablet (last
year's Nexus 7), completely agree with both points made here. [The first being
that Android development is better, and the second being that the vast
majority Android apps currently suck compared to the iOS equivalent, making
for a nice opportunity.]

It's hard enough to peg a real user need and deliver on that need in a
satisfying, sticky way. It's at the core of what a startup needs to do to
cultivate that product development discipline as a team, and tools that make
that harder are insult to injury.

As others have mentioned, though, none of these app startups are launching
just for a smooth development experience. And Android just hasn't shown that
users will reliably upgrade their OS, much less pay for apps like iOS users
do. Until that changes, even if the better dev experience will accelerate a
shift, it's sort of a chicken-and-egg problem on app quality.

~~~
jcromartie
> making for a nice opportunity

You are assuming that there is demand for anything but free apps. I know that
I personally would kill to pay for top-quality Android apps like I do on iOS,
but I don't think I speak for the majority of Android users. Based on
everything that I've seen, they just don't want to pay.

~~~
robbfitzsimmons
Completely agreed (and would also kill to pay); what I meant at the end of my
comment that it's that it's a nice opportunity predicated on being a quality
app right when the market starts to shift.

Which I think is what Will's betting on.

~~~
dycow
I'm more than happy to pay _money_ for a good product than waste my _time_
suffering though shitty free ones that throw ads at you.

I've always thought Google's greatest achievement was to convince people that
they are getting free services..

------
dasil003
This seems like really forced wishful thinking. Sure Apple makes you jump
through a lot of annoying hoops, but it doesn't matter how cynical you are you
can't hand-wave away the security benefits, and you certainly can't ignore the
revenue differentials. I think Android is moving in the right direction, and
actually I've used it as my primary phone for years now (I've owned 2 Nexus
phones and the old G1), but waiting 5 days for approval (which is the average
I've experienced for 6 submissions over the last 2 months) is not as big of a
hurdle as the article paints. There's certainly nothing that requires
waterfall development or "waiting months".

------
badman_ting
This is such a weird piece. It seems to get why, despite the onerous
restrictions Apple puts on devs, iOS has great apps and huge numbers in every
direction, but then just says Android is better. Perhaps a better argument
would be to understand why the gain is worth the pain, and then move to saying
that the gain without the pain would be even sweeter.

I dunno, I make web stuff. I just like watching you guys duke it out.

~~~
mooreds
What I took from the piece is that Android is far more developer friendly in
terms of ease of development, deployment to devices for testing, and
releasing.

Whether that is enough to make it a 'better' platform depends on what your
needs are.

If I were doing a mobile startup and needed fast feedback on devices,
Android's fast turnaround sure would be interesting. Not the deciding factor,
but definitely a check in the Android column.

------
domness
Hmm, I think a lot of people are missing the whole point in this article. I do
around 60% Ruby on Rails, 35% iOS and 5% Android dev. The idea around a "lean"
startup being, that an MVP, or each new feature, or even testing a change to a
previous feature is usually done in quick succession. This being testing with
current users over a period of say, a week, and then from the results, changes
can be made and the team have learned from the testing.

So really, Android allows for this quick succession of testing features and
iterating as quick as possible, with even to a few hours turnaround. Also,
that it would cost a lot in development time to get something "just right" for
the App Store for it to be accepted, whereas with Android you can keep on
iterating and pushing changes without having to spent a huge amount of time
making everything look perfect, and be absolute minimal in terms of bugs.

I love iOS development, and yes, I agree with most people on here about the
revenue from iOS, the people paying for apps, Apple's process of helping keep
out most malware etc. etc., but for the sake of a "lean" startup, spending
extra weeks testing apps making sure it's completely bug free and "looking
good enough" for iOS, as well as the wait for Apple to accept the application
(and then for users to download the update, in the case of iOS 7, this has
been solved), Android is a much better dev option for these changes.

Of course, when the team knows that the app is something that people care for,
and they have a decent knowledge of what users want, what features they use,
and the kind of value that the mobile app brings to them, then they can go
ahead and make the best possible iOS app.

TL;DR

Saving time, money and quick iterations, learning from customers and getting
quick data for problem validation, is much easier and faster on Android, than
the process on iOS. Think Lean Startup.

~~~
ryandrake
As a mobile app user, I don't want daily updates from your app as you
"iterate" away and try to figure out what to build. I want to download the
finished product that works.

I'm not your free beta testing service. If you want to test concepts, do
proper market research.

~~~
domness
Well then you wouldn't be the early adopter :) The idea is to test it against
early adopters who don't mind about these quick changes and are less worried
about bugs, because the idea/product is something that's good enough to help
you in some way, shape or form.

May I ask, what's proper market research? Considering you can get so far with
"proper market research", but it definitely doesn't tell the whole picture.
People often don't know they have a problem until one is solved and a good
way.

~~~
ryandrake
I should have said, "traditional market research" instead, including trend and
competitive analysis, segmentation, primary research such as focus groups and
surveys, prototyping in front of a representative sample of users, etc.

An iterative approach is fine, once the above basics have been done, but if
you need to deploy code changes in an app every day or even every week, the
product is probably not ready for V1 yet.

~~~
domness
Well of course all that is done before all of the developing of the app. The
idea is to reduce the amount of uncertainty by not creating a full blown app
that has had a lot of time and money put into it, when some of the features
aren't helping in terms of getting new customers, keeping old customers and
bringing any value to the product/service.

------
ensmotko
Another thing that bothers me with development for iOS is that you _need_
apple hardware and software. I can't develop an iOS on my Linux machine (I've
tried running OSX in virtualbox, but it's slow and not to mention illegal).

I really wish Apple would make their platform a little more available.
Lowering the $100 yearly fee would be a good start...

~~~
aryastark
> you need apple hardware and software

It's worse than that, I'm afraid. You need the absolute latest of both.

My perfectly fine Macbook from 2008 should be more than adequate for
developing iOS apps. It's a core2 duo with 2GB of RAM. I mean, these aren't
exactly the days of Pentium 60 vs. XT 8088.

Yet the max OS I can upgrade to is Lion. And that's with going through Snow
Leopard first. And who knows how much longer Xcode will work on Lion.

~~~
alex_c
"5 years old" is a pretty far cry from "absolute latest". My 2008 Core2 Duo
MacBook, upgraded to 5GB of RAM and an SSD, works like a champ for iPhone
development. I don't understand this complaint.

~~~
aryastark
at best you can run OS X Lion. That's it. Before you even get to that, though,
you have to upgrade to Snow Leopard for silly arbitrary reasons.

OS X is currently on Mountain Lion, going to Mavericks real soon now. I would
not count on Xcode running on Lion for any real length of time now. After
that, you're 100% screwed.

Contrast that to Windows XP, where I can still run the latest iTunes and sync
the latest iPhone 5 with. Can't do that in Leopard, either.

~~~
jordanthoms
Wow, I'm amazed they dropped support for computers that recent. New versions
Windows/Linux will still run on very old hardware, there are usually drivers
around.

~~~
rsfinn
He apparently had the bad luck to own the most recently made model of
Macintosh that will _not_ run Mountain Lion; virtually every other Mac from
2008 is OK.

The business case for supporting older computers is very different for
Microsoft (or for Linux) than it is for Apple.

------
wizzard
Sure, the release process might be easier on Android, but there are other
factors involved in app development. Android is becoming a kind of curse word
at my current job. Getting a working emulator can be a huge exercise in
frustration (like for gMaps v2... forget it). Every and any feature or UI
widget can break in unexpected ways on different devices. The tools are very
functional but about as unintuitive and finicky as you can get. And I can tell
you the documentation is not shorter because it's better.

I have nothing personal against Android, but let's not just skim over the
actual DEVELOPMENT process.

~~~
general_failure
Sorry but it sounds like you are a android noob

~~~
wizzard
Sorry, but it sounds like you are a troll.

I'd be happy to give details if you don't know (or don't care to see) what I'm
talking about. But based on the upvotes to my comment and very similar
complaints in other comments to this article, many people agree with me.

------
brennenHN
I love the point about iteration here, but I think this post is a little bit
disingenuous.

The problem with developing for Android as a startup is that baseline
reliability is incredibly resource intensive.

If you want your app to work on the most popular few devices, you will still
have to spend a considerable amount of time and money testing the different
configurations and fixing bugs that have nothing to do with your core
functionality.

If you want broad support to address most of the market, you're going to be
spending a huge amount of development time tweaking little details of your
code. When you fix a bug for the Galaxy S4, it'll start crashing on the HTC
One X, and the Galaxy Note will never look quite right.

Iteration is valuable, but iOS lets you build one product and iterate on it,
to build for Android, you have to start by building 15.

~~~
jordanthoms
Any specifics on that? Unless you are doing something really weird, there
shouldn't be compatibility issues between recent devices like that. Generally
the issues are with older devices that have very little ram etc, which are
becoming less and less common.

------
PStamatiou
Great post -- As a newly diehard Android user, I will agree that while Android
is definitely getting some amazing and beautiful apps, it's nothing like on
the App Store. If you spend the time to design a beautiful app, there is a
larger opportunity for you to unseat very popular Android apps. Android users
crave great design too. Start building.

[http://paulstamatiou.com/android-is-better](http://paulstamatiou.com/android-
is-better)

------
venomsnake
Now ... we tried to register apple dev account in late 2010 for my company.
The first thing they required was a lot of documents. We send them. Then came
the payment ... they refused to accept our credit card and refused non credit
card payment methods. The email we got back from apple was a exercise in
absurdity - (this was 2012 already after a lot of back and forth) - they
wanted the details of the company credit card send to them BY FAX. In 2012
they wanted for us to send the full details of a credit card written on paper.
By fax. So we told them to fuck off. Triple checked - it was not scam or
phishing letter.

Then we made a simple single developer account ... personal. It took only a
month.

------
tomasien
It's perfectly fine to argue the merits of Android development, but arguing
that it's hard to run an app on your own device using XCode is dishonest. It
handles provisioning profiles automatically, and you can even hit "fix it" if
it doesn't find a valid one when you try to run it.

I've been building an app for Android for 2 weeks now, and I still can't get
the phone settings on an Android phone to use it for development. This may be
MY problem because I'm a terrible developer, but it's still a problem.

~~~
krschultz
"Note: On Android 4.2 and newer, Developer options is hidden by default. To
make it available, go to Settings > About phone and tap Build number seven
times. Return to the previous screen to find Developer options."

[http://developer.android.com/tools/device.html](http://developer.android.com/tools/device.html)

~~~
tomasien
I know man, still not working. No idea why, probably just something I'm
missing because Eclipse is ugly and difficult as sin.

~~~
josteink
Dump Eclipse. No really.

New Android studio based on JetBrains' IntelliJ is so much better it makes me
wonder how I would ever endure using Eclipse for anything.

Try it. It'll take you less than 5 minutes from download to having your hello
world on device, in debugging mode. It'll be the single best thing you did all
day.

------
grosen
Free apps do well on Android. Paid apps (Outright & Free + In App Purchases)
generate more revenue on iOS. Being able to show traction is important for
startups but, being able to show increased revenue is equally if not more
important.

Until Android on a whole proves to be more lucrative to monetize apps, many
developers will continue building iOS first (imho).

~~~
ajross
Your statement is true, but sort of missing the point of the article. Sure,
"many" developers "will" wait "until" Android "proves" better. But some won't,
and there is value in being part of the early ones to jump. The article is
advocating jumping now and gives some arguments (not all of them convincing
IMHO) as to why that's a good idea.

You're just saying that not everyone will take the advice. Well, yeah. :)

~~~
grosen
Android might never prove better. When/if it ever does then I will reevaluate
and deal with being a fast follower rather than a first mover.

However, it is premature at this stage to state that Android is the better
platform for startups.

------
9999
The iOS development cycle works the way it does to protect Apple's customers.
The people that pay for your application deserve and demand a certain level of
quality. They also shouldn't be constantly bothered with updating your hastily
developed, poorly tested, 'rapidly iterating' product.

As for Android, Google doesn't care. The person with the Android phone is not
their customer, they're the product. Google is in the business of delivering
users to advertisers. They are just barely in the business of making devices,
and that's really just to feed more users to their advertisers by making a
product that's as good as the iPhone and also to hedge against a single
Android phone manufacturer from owning too much of the total Android market.

~~~
dycow
I'm an android developer and I agree with this comment. The article as a whole
paints a really bad picture of Apple's development process when, in honesty, I
wish Google would learn a bit from the things Apple does really well. I really
hope people don't think it's okay to ship an app with a typo in the title --
that's just lazy and irresponsible. While I wish the $99 fee was only required
to publish an app (as opposed to being required to develop one), I'm still
waiting for the day when Google can truly compete with iOS on a platform and
tools level. In my opinion, Google has a long way to go on that front despite
their increasing market share (and all revenue advantages that ensue).

~~~
emhs
Say what you will about quality differences in the tools, but the availability
of the tools comes down heavily in Android's favor. Further, getting through
the developer-license-acquisition process is hit or miss -- some people have
it easy, some have it hard. Despite whatever advantages it has, iOS obstructs
the ability to learn from users' needs and iterate quickly. Yes, there are
things that could be better in the android ecosystem. But the ease of getting
a bugfix to your users matters, and iOS fails on this.

------
rjvir
While the 5-10 day approval process to get the App Store is inconvenient for
developers, it gets a disproportionate amount of attention. The limiting
factor in software development is and will remain to be engineering resources.
Building on the Apple ecosystem still takes considerably less time and effort
to complete an app than Android, due to consistent and up-to-date hardware &
software, common design patterns, a robust developer ecosystem, and generally
a more sophisticated development platform.

~~~
prehkugler
As a mobile developer who has worked on both platforms, I agree wholeheartedly
with this. Xcode and Interface Builder is much easier to use than Eclipse (I
found myself constantly editing the raw XML interface files). And I find the
UIKit API much simpler to use (for most cases) than Android's Activity-based
SDK.

~~~
Rezo
IntelliJ or the upcoming Android Studio (based on IntelliJ), which will
eventually replace Eclipse as the recommended IDE, makes Android development
much more pleasant. Give it a try.

------
andrewcamel
If you're alright ignoring the far more profitable iOS market, then sure,
Android is better. But if you're trying to operate a startup that actually
needs to make money, it is not a smart business decision to ignore it.
Complain as much as you want, but iOS still provides a better opportunity than
Android in the very large majority of cases and because of that, I'm ok
dealing with the headaches that come with it.

------
umsm
I don't agree with this.

Basically the author thinks that you can test the market if a particular idea
/ app is worth making by releasing on Android first. The problem is that the
android users will most likely hate the UI and the bugs as it will probably be
thrown together.

When releasing an app on iOS, you don't have to include ALL features, you can
release an app that is well designed and functions well with limited
functionality. Then add features as you need to.

That's what we did when we released our app. We released for iOS first and
then for android, but we gradually added features as needed or wanted.

~~~
jamesjguthrie
> you don't have to include ALL features

You sure do have to include a lot of features though. You've no chance if your
app is a simple one because you'll get hit with one of these:

2.12: Apps that are not very useful, are simply web sites bundled as apps, or
do not provide any lasting entertainment value may be rejected

~~~
umsm
I believe you are referring to the app store guidelines. The article mentions
the android market place.

~~~
jamesjguthrie
Of course I'm referring to the App Store as that's what your comment was
about. If you want to publish on the App Store you need to make sure your app
can't be thought of as 'limited' as then the reviewer could reject it, citing
rule 2.12 - whereas on Android you can release almost whatever you want.

~~~
umsm
Ah, I understand now. I was referring to minor features that will take a long
time to implement. I understand that you can't release just a splash screen.

In every product, there core features, then there are minor / convenience
features. Let's say you have a "search" feature. That is a core part of the
app / product / service. Some features that you can probably put off are:
"advanced search", "refinement search", or even "sorting results". All of
these are convenient, but you may want to have the app in store without these
features.

------
anigbrowl
Design is an easy win on Android, but it's the suck for any kind of audio
processing because of the horrendous lag. Like MS before them, Google
completely ignored the needs/requests of musicians for years on end, and as a
result all the good apps are for iPad. The only two Android audio apps I can
think of that are worth looking at are Caustic and FruityLoops, and neither is
particularly performance-friendly. I was using a remote control MIDI app for a
while called Humatic but the developer said device fragmentation was such a
miserable experience that he never wants to develop on Android again.

I've been using Android since Google put out the Nexus One, and I still prefer
it for a phone. But for a tablet I have to unwillingly go with an iPad next
time, because that's where the good stuff is.

------
grbalaffa
All this talk about process, but not a word about the quality of the SDK
itself. Android is quite frankly still very far behind when it comes to really
basic things. Here's just one example: iOS has had easy support for custom
fonts in native UI elements since the early days, meanwhile here is the
situation on Android:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2973270/using-a-custom-
ty...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2973270/using-a-custom-typeface-in-
android)

(Yes, the thread was started in 2010, but scroll to the bottom to see more
recent comments -- things have scarcely gotten any better.)

Anyone who has actually deployed a non-trivial app on both Android and iOS
knows quite well which one is the "better" development environment.

~~~
akmiller
This is anecdotal (but frankly so is yours)...

We have mainly been doing iOS apps but we are hearing demand from customers
about having an option in Android so one of our developers (who is definitely
much more of an Apple fan) has been experimenting with the Android SDK and he
has been very impressed with the Android SDK. He has found many things to be
far easier in the Android SDK than with iOS. His main complaint is with the
emulator which is extremely frustrating to use but since it's dead easy to use
your device that's not as big of a deal.

~~~
grbalaffa
At least I gave an example. "Many things" are not just easier, but "far"
easier? Like what? I've got plenty more examples, but I'd really like to hear
about these "many" things which are "far" easier than in iOS.

------
samspenc
Excellent write-up. As a mobile developer, this was my experience publishing
Android apps to Play store as well.

Also, my theory is that once there are enough quality apps on Android, we will
start to see the center of popularity shift to Android from iOS.

------
lukabratos
"Knock, knock." "Who’s there?" "Very long pause…." "Java."

~~~
babebridou
"2 weeks later..." "[NSString stringWithFormat: @"%@ who?", result];"

~~~
ipodize
8 months later: "ArithmeticException - joke doesn't add up"

~~~
pjmlp
10 months later "random crashes due to pointer misuse".

------
gte910h
I'm a 3rd party iOS developer:

If you want to make money by directly selling something, or need people who
constantly use your app => iOS still seems to have higher engagement and
higher revenue.

If you want to make money by having a thing you're giving away to tons of
people who need to only use your app briefly, android MIGHT be the case for
tomorrow and for certain communities, today.

That said, "Android" isn't a monolith. I think Google did a tremendously good
thing by incorporating so many new services into the Play Store rather than
into the almost-never-updated core OS, and you should be looking at targeting
THAT, not years old versions of Android, to get an updated, easy to maintain
android target you do aside an iOS target. People will complain, but will also
get new phones that have the Google play store with modern services.

With both versions, it's always really important to measure cost per user on a
version by version, platform by platform basis.

------
markshepard
Interestingly the opposite is true in our case. We are a small startup that
has apps available both in Apple and Android. But because it is hard to
develop and deploy a successful app in iOS than in android, it keeps
competition at bay. In Android, lot of half baked apps pollute the store (and
the fake ratings and review destroy any sort of app discovery) that it is
simply not worth it.

While we have had our share of frusturation with the apple app store process
(weird rejections that had to be explained etc), I don't see Android as an
alternative to iOS appstore for startups. Once the iOS app is up running, we
develop the android (and since we believe android users are used to seeing
incomplete apps), we take our time adding functions to the app as well! (Yes I
know, it is a cynical view, but we simply match expectation)

------
leemhoffman
The IOS Development process is outdated and kind of crappy, but there are
simple tacitly accepted solutions that fix virtually all of the issues.
Specifically:

\- Hockey App For Pre Public Distribution - Auto Updates, One Click Link
Install (no need to join a google group) \- Enterprise account - no device
ids, send the link to anyone

The dev cycle on mobile is slower, and more waterfall, but there is no excuse
to not be iterating on anything more than 3-5 day cycles on either android or
IOS.

------
Mikeb85
There are plenty of apps (including games) on the Play store with 100,000+
purchases (not just free installs), and I know of at least a few that cost $3+
with 500,000 to 1,000,000 purchases, and Minecraft has 1-5 million puchases at
($6,99? - forgot).

This means that the possibility to make 6-7 figures on Android apps is there,
if your app is compelling enough. The problem isn't getting users to pay, but
making an app compelling enough that users want to pay for it.

------
zerop
Yes.. developers might prefer android over iOS.. but end of the day iOS apps
get you business..IMO...tell me which android apps sell better than their
counterpart iOS apps?

~~~
willwhitney
Pocket Casts actually wrote a great blog post about this:
[http://blog.shiftyjelly.com/2013/02/20/why-android-
first/](http://blog.shiftyjelly.com/2013/02/20/why-android-first/)

Because some niches are really poorly covered on Android, apps that fill those
may have greater success than they would on iOS.

~~~
r00fus
Is niche-filling in the shadow of a large corporation (Google) really a
sustainable way to run a business?

Software-savvy giants like Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon pretty much
don't care about stomping on your little niche (esp. if it's due to a
deficiency in the platform/system) if it helps them one-up their competitor.

------
bobbles
Things that annoy me about buying android apps since I switched to a nexus 4
this week:

No way to in-app upgrade to remove ads. what?? (you have to buy a separate
app).

Heaps of games / apps that dont even provide an option to remove the ads.

I feel like a lot of android developers are going to miss out on people moving
from iOS to android now that the OS has matured and has improved a lot of the
areas that iOS users were worried about. These are people willing to whip out
the card and pay because they're accustomed to it on iOS.

If there is no way for me to remove ads from an app I am more likely to
uninstall it then use it with ads.

------
shinratdr
What makes it good for startups also makes it good for malware, spam apps,
information harvesting and other user unfriendly things.

I'm not arguing against this post, it's true in the sense that it is
indisputably easier to iterate on Android vs iOS because of the lack of a
review system. But as someone with both Android and iOS devices that they
enjoy, it's very easy to see which one is a more user-friendly approach.

Having a broken app or two for a week is a small price to pay for trust. I
don't trust the Play Store, I check out each individual app before
downloading. On iOS because of the more robust review & permissions model, I
can trust that while what I download might not be good, it will in all
likelihood be safe.

In addition, I feel like evangelizing to developers like this is pointless.
Besides the minority of personal developers driven primarily by morals, their
preferred platform or preferred tools, developers go where the users are and
the money is. If "Android is for startups" then that should be the case, and a
blog post isn't going to make it so. The presence of startups iterating on
Android initially makes it so, and that is driven by users + money.

------
trimbo
VCs all have iPhones. This is the #1 reason to develop for iPhone first.

~~~
gonzo
VCs all have iPhones because the majority of people who are willing to pay for
a phone or apps prefer iOS.

it's really that simple.

------
x0054
I think the difference in development comes in when you need to do some
hardware testing. With apple you need to design for 3 different display sizes,
with 2 resolutions each. You also have to test your product on (at most) 12
different devices, and that's if you really want to cover the field. On the
other hand, with Android, if you want to do it right, you need to design for
hundreds of different screen sizes, all kinds of different aspect ratios and
resolutions, and hundreds of different hardware devices. Or you can forgo all
that, and just assume (incorrectly) that majority of the Android users run the
latest and greatest Galaxy hardware.

~~~
KirinDave
You can shave away a LOT of form factors if you just agree to cut off
development before Android 4.0.

This is tough for people to resolve to do, but in the US that's 60% of the
market. I'd rather ship a good product to 60% of the people in a reasonable
amount of time, rather than spending a ton of time working on tiny slices of
the last 40% and limiting what the product can do overall.

You also end up targeting much newer devices and OS versions, which evades a
lot of problems with piracy.

~~~
krschultz
For my market, 90% of my app's users are 4.0+. 97% of all sessions are 4.0+.

I still support & test pre-4.0, but I'm starting to consider options for
spending less time on Gingerbread support. Progressive enhancement helps (we
just don't do a lot of things on Gingerbread at all), but it still clutters up
the code. Even a few months ago I couldn't imagine dropping Gingerbread
support, but I have seen almost no growth in Gingerbread users over the last
3-6 months.

~~~
KirinDave
I am glad to hear stories like this. Thank you very much for sharing that.

------
mynd
I think a little barrier to entry is a good thing. App Store is saturated as
it is.

~~~
delinka
But the only barrier is the $99 fee for the dev account. Register as an
individual and it's "instant access." And that's why the App Store is
saturated.

They set up the barriers the moment you want to register a company. Presumably
so that you can't pretend to be representing someone else's company.

------
aufreak3
> Besides, have you tried Android recently? You might be suprised to discover
> that Android is better.

.. not yet for music apps. Even Google folks admit that [1]. This _really_
can't wait any longer. Where is Garage Band for Android please? ... and to
those saying "you can't complain only about music, look at the games, todo
lists, blah blah", sorry music _IS_ my domain and that's the _only_ thing I
care about.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3kfEeMZ65c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3kfEeMZ65c)

------
t1m
>1990 is calling… and it wants its product development cycle back.

In the early 1990s, many developers were using an OS called Unix, with
esoteric tools like vi, make, sh, and emacs. They wrote software in ancient
languages like C, C++, Python, and Objective-C. Their programs communicated
over TCP/IP networks using sockets. If you were lucky enough to be working on
a military contract, you would be exchanging documents using XML and HTML papa
SGML.

Everyone suffered until the major breakthroughs of Javascript and PHP.

~~~
general_failure
Huh? It was windows basically and iteration was depending on the App author.

~~~
t1m
In 1990 microsoftland, most people were still using DOS. Borland had Turbo
Pascal and Turbo C products on the market for a number of years - vt100 style
text menuing systems were still king in MS-DOS.

Windows 3.1 was released in 1992, which was the real starting adoption point
for the majority of the market.

By that time, the NeXT computer had already been out for four years, the Mac
and X Windows were eight.

I was actually just pointing out that software development, as a discipline
hasn't advanced that much since 1990. The number of KLOCs freely available to
use within your code has increased dramatically. The documentation (which was
on paper pre-WWW) has improved exponentially. The tools, OSes and languages?
Pretty much a plateau there since the mid 80s peak.

~~~
general_failure
OK, you win. But you completely missed the point of 1990 in that post (hint:
he meant windows)

------
joshstrange
Have you ever tried TestFlight for iOS testing/dev? I'm not saying the Apple
process is perfect (I agree it sucks) but TestFlight makes getting test builds
out much easier.

------
nathan_long
Semi-related rant: My sole experience with Apple Developer stuff was being
forced to register as one to get some basic command-line tools on my Mac.

They made me complete a questionnaire about exactly which kinds of Apple
products I wanted to develop for, and "none" wasn't an option. That's kind of
a weird, Apple-centric worldview. "Errrm, I'm doing web development..."

~~~
engrenage
You don't need to register as a developer to get the command line tools.

~~~
rsynnott
Some of the Java development tools (JNI-related stuff), oddly, used to require
(free) registration. Don't think they do any more, though.

------
Apocryphon
This is the most tiresome religious war. While it's interesting to compare and
contrast development experiences between Android and iOS, this comment thread
seems mostly a lot of outrage between partisans of both platforms. Which makes
me wonder where devs who use PhoneGap and other bridge frameworks, or HTML5,
feel about all of this.

------
habosa
The speed of pushing to the Play Store can't be overrated for startups. If you
release an app that has a critical bug this is what happens:

iOS: Fix it, wait days-weeks for approval, push the update

Android: Fix it, wait 30 seconds, update pushed to everyone

If the bug is big enough, this can be the difference between losing all of
your initial users and gaining critical mass.

------
alayne
Why don't they build a web app if they want to iterate faster?

~~~
rimantas
The only thing web app can make you achieve faster is to reach end user.
Anything else will be so much faster using native SDK it is not even funny
(assuming you have equal knowledge of either technology).

~~~
zwrose
Sure, but isn't that the key of Lean Startup, which is what OP was hammering
on anyway?

Web apps do perform less optimally, but they are also platform independent and
can be done quickly. Why not start there, make sure you are hitting the right
user needs, then invest in app development?

------
frozenport
Android is for judicious, poor foreigners and not the hip kids that would pay
4x for a carwash ordered by phone. I recal the pruce gauging by travel
companies who increase airfair by 10% when an Apple brpwser was detected.

------
luscious
Does this article need to exist? Who is this preaching to?

------
dangerboysteve
Check back in 1-2 years and see how much publishing to Play is any easier than
Apple's App store. Google is adopting the Apple playbook more and more every
day to ensure quality, security and consistency in the android ecosystem. The
only difference is that Apple has had a head start by a few years and they
have gone through the growing pains and issues that Google's play is starting
to encounter.

------
jmtame
Three words: high fidelity prototypes. You can use them irregardless of the
process to distribute your application. You should already have customer
feedback on your app before you even commit engineering resources to write
production quality code, and there's no excuse not to be prototyping and
getting customer feedback far before you release it to the app store for the
masses.

------
moubarak
i don't have much to say, but i develop camera apps and i also started with
Android and then moved to iOS. The transition was swift because of iOS's
screen sizes/resolutions were well defined and straight forward, no
fragmentation manager was required to handle different screens.

Although i was using a single device for Android, i couldn't help but write a
generic manager to handle different screens rather than hardcode my prototype
to a single device. On the other hand, iOS screen and camera previews are
hardcoded by design, and that saved me a lot of time.

Android being open source helped quite a bit, since i could borrow all that
code from the stock camera app, but it was tedious to say the least. When i
transitioned to iOS i was surprised how fast i got my basic camera app to work
(few hours perhaps).

There are other reasons why i find iOS to be superior for prototyping (i have
only touched on the camera preview issue). One other example is the relative
documentation. iOS documentation gets you going much faster when working with
the camera at least.

Just my 2 cents.

------
golergka
> release cycle of the App Store encourages the perfectionist in all of us to
> make it “done”

Isn't that exactly the reason for Apple's policies?

------
namenotrequired
As Paul Graham said...
[http://paulgraham.com/apple.html](http://paulgraham.com/apple.html)

------
chj
The artificial limitations around iOS are contrary to what developers should
believe in -- the freedom to write and distribute software on a platform
without approval from some central authority.

Despite the fact that iOS has much better design and comes with much better
developer tools, Android is nowadays the better choice.

------
mentat
Since this is still floating around /best, I highly recommend
[http://hockeyapp.net/](http://hockeyapp.net/) SoundFocus is using it for
their betas and it "just works" for distribution and updating. Feels like the
app store too.

------
liyanage
_Having to make sure that everything is perfect before you ship_

As a user, that sounds pretty good to me...

------
scrrr
Sorry, but this is not a good article.

Instead of telling me what to do based on a small dataset of evidence, I'd
much rather read what you have done. What worked for you. I don't think the
author knows what he is talking about.

------
so898
So every startup group should buy 300+ Android devices to test their
application?

------
eonil
Wrong. Completely wrong. Stop trying this stupid wording fraud.

What the hell _the Android_ means? The users? Or the cartel? Android users are
never starving for beautiful apps. _The Android cartel_ does. Android users
always starving for free stuffs, not beautiful. What kind of idiot choose
Android __for beautiful apps instead of iOS __which is already-existing and
also proven? Android has no beautiful apps because the users don 't want it.

Market share? Market share itself doesn't make money. Especially blind market
is purely useless. This article is just a mutated clone of crappy meme: "Say
market share, and never say how the market share will make money.". Even
Google and telecoms are making more money on iOS.

Android is pretty attractive toy for a developer. But for business? No
kidding.

------
shmerl
I'd say Sailfish is for startups.

------
zerny
Android sucks

------
benihana
Another post on the top of Hacker News making the mistake of thinking paying
customers give a crap about how easy it is to [write|deploy|test|debug] your
app. Even with all the pain associated with the App Store people still write
more apps for it than ever. Why? Cause people pay for apps there. They don't
on the Play Store.

~~~
corresation
While I entirely agree with your lead in, your last bit is very "where the
puck was" thinking.

Two years ago the Play store yielded 1/10th the revenue of the App Store, by
common metrics. One year ago it was 1/4\. The most recent stat is 1/2 -- still
months old. Do you see where this is going?

The #1 source of revenue for many games and other media on the App Store is
via gifted iTunes cards. This is a mechanism that is only now finding its way
to Android.

~~~
speeder
Care to elaborate on the iTunes cards thing??

It is not just a 50 USD card (or other similar values) that people buy and
gift around? What this has to do with games?

~~~
corresation
iTunes cards are a _hugely_ popular gift for children / teenagers / college
kids, quickly exchanged for fart apps and in app smurfberries. The nascent
Google simile of this is still minuscule in comparison, making gifting in the
Android market a much less pleasant affair. I would gather that the KitKat
promotion is partly to help spread awareness of Play cards.

As a second effect, people don't think of things like iTunes cards as _real_
money. Give someone $50 on an iTunes cards and, I suspect, it will see much
less discretion than a $50 bill.

~~~
speeder
I see...

I was wondering about it...

Gift cards do not exist on my country, neither on my target markets, thus why
I was kinda confused about it!

------
antidaily
_______________ is broken.

