

Why iOS Apps Look Better Than Android Apps - vmyy99
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/04/easier-design-apps-ios/

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davedx
Sounds like a load of FUD. Fragmentation can cause issues, but it's hardly the
nightmare it's portrayed to be in this article.

Speaking as a game developer, if you can't make your software fit in more than
one resolution then you're headed for trouble anyway.

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tseabrooks
I think you're looking at it only from your perspective. If you're making a
game for Android and you're using drawing primitives directly and the like I
suspect the fragmentation is a non issue.

However, when making simpler applications that lean heavily on the built in
widgets writing Android apps is a big PITA in my opinion. I write apps for
both Android and iPhone (Because I love money) and it's way way harder to make
something look nice on Android than it is on the iPhone.

It's not impossible in Android land. It's just too much work to make it
profitable on small utility-ish applications. The ability to do absolute
positioning on iOS makes it "easy" to make things look nice. However, in
android land when I get custom graphics and designs from my designer it's
REALLY a big PITA to make it all look nice and line up.

I personally wish Google had restricted what OEMs could do a bit more.

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bigiain
I love how the first example the article cites is Apple's innovative and new
RoundRects: "In Hipmunk's iOS app, left, pop-overs have rounded corners,
something that's more challenging on Android."

[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_E...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.txt)

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vacri
Rounded corners have always bugged me because they're always, always aliased
in some way. The 'line' just isn't optically smooth, it's approximated. I
personally prefer a clean corner to an approximated curve.

Similarly, in the first example, while I like the transparency effect
(probably not for a map), I hate the current trend to have everything 'shine'
when it shouldn't. Much as I'm not particularly keen on Win 8, I do like their
idea of being 'authentically digital'. In the first example, I'd much prefer
to use the UI on the right - even the text looks clearer (it's just not
"whoah, cool, printed in glass!")

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gmac
On 'retina displays' -- iPhone 4/4S and iPad 3 -- a curved line is, for all
practical purposes, smooth. And it's not as if Android is made of only
straight lines.

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ja27
The top reason I'd think of? Most companies build the iOS version first then
port it to other platforms. That's usually under tighter deadlines than the
iOS version had and there's not much design flexibility. Just make it work
almost identical to the iOS version and it needs to be done tomorrow.

It is funny to hear that rounded rects are still an issue in 2012.
[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_E...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.txt)

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alanbyrne
Why are we still creating apps? Can't these optical nuances can be achieved on
both devices using HTML5 and CSS3 and run them in the browser of any modern
device? (I'm legitimately asking, I don't know the answer)

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winterton
Because many devices still lack decent hardware acceleration. If you're doing
a lot of complex UI work with tons of CSS3, some devices just can't keep up.
My team investigated building one of our recent apps using only HTML5 and
CSS3, and while it rendered smoothly on some newer devices, it performed
terribly on older ones. So for compatibility and performance reasons, we moved
back to native. Perhaps this is simply anecdotal, but in our experience, your
milage may vary when it comes to building mobile web apps, sometimes it's the
best option, sometimes it's not.

