

Android Is Not Better. Neither Is iOS. - bozhidar
http://batsov.com/articles/2013/08/14/android-is-not-better-neither-is-ios/

======
ZeroGravitas
My personal favorite theory about why iOS makes more revenue in the app store,
is that more rich idiots use iOS.

Now, I'm perhaps not serious about that, and I'm just reacting to the tone of
"Android users are lesser people" that's been prevalent recently. But I will
note that according to this report:

[http://www.distimo.com/publications/archive/Distimo%20Public...](http://www.distimo.com/publications/archive/Distimo%20Publication%20-%20May%202013.pdf)

A $15.99 Final Fantasy game from Square-Enix made 73% of it's revenue from
Android in May 2013 while the "free" Candy Crush Saga and Simpsons: Tapped Out
games made much more money from iOS.

These "free" games are apparently designed around "Whales", people who spend
literally thousands of dollars on them:

[http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/11/meet-the-
whales/all/](http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/11/meet-the-whales/all/)

 _" Lee says that spending money on games like Clash of Clans is actually
saving him money in the long-run: Before he started gaming, he says he and a
small group of friends would go out drinking, sometimes spending as much as
$6,000 in a single night between them."

"He wound up spending nearly $5,000 in that game before trading it for Clash
of Clans, but says that’s far less than what he would have otherwise spent on
alcohol.

“I actually save money playing these games instead of going out and drinking,”
he said._

...

 _" Vince P., who also asked us to withhold his last name, has been playing
the Facebook game Battle Pirates since early 2011. His total spend: over
$16,000.

“It does kind of shock me, for sure, that it was that much,” said Vince, who
goes by the username “Spoon” in Battle Pirates. “And it’s all for nothing.”

Vince is 45 years old, divorced, with a 16-year-old daughter. He says he makes
between $200,000 and $400,000 annually. He looked positively distraught over
the situation during a Skype interview with Wired, as he tabulated a list of
his receipts."_

It's my semi-serious theory that these people, at least in the US, are more
likely to own iOS devices.

~~~
chasing
> My personal ["semi-serious"] favorite theory about why iOS makes more
> revenue in the app store, is that more rich idiots use iOS.

Ooh -- can I make silly generalizations, as well?

My personal favorite theory about why iOS makes more revenue in the app store,
is that more Android users wildly mash at their phone screens with their
giant, greasy potato-chip-dust-covered fingers in a Monster energy drink-
induced aggro-fog and so are mostly unable to either understand or properly
use their device well enough to access an app store and install stuff.

Or. Maybe people have different tastes for different reasons. And maybe the
cherry-picked single data point that Final Fantasy III (which seems to have
not sold very well at all) happened to be more popular on Android devices
doesn't really mean much of anything conclusive (the PDF you linked to
certainly doesn't have much to say about it). Maybe there are more "whales" on
iOS simply because more users are comfortable using the platform and
downloading apps, and given that app phones are damned near ubiquitous, both
platforms will have smart-and-savvy users _and_ rich (or poor or middle-class)
"idiots." And everything in between.

~~~
jjindev
It was shocking for me when I first encountered people who make $200K+ and
didn't know where all the money went. I too presumed that being "savvy" was
somehow linked with high income. I now know it is not that tight a binding.

Going back to iOS devices, they provide a simple filter. People who buy them
pay more, and they are therefore likely to pay more again. It really says
nothing about their income or credit card balance. It is purely about spending
habits.

~~~
chasing
Eh, I don't really think that's a fair conclusion. Or, at least, you've
managed to phrase it in an insulting way. Yes, if I have more discretionary
income, I'm probably more likely to purchase more apps. This isn't a bad
thing, necessarily: It's just how it works. As an app developer, I'd much
prefer to target people who can afford my product.

~~~
YeahKIA
Why can't apple and Android fanboys respect each others choices? This one is
hilarious
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsQxaNKWFfA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsQxaNKWFfA)

------
pilif
Nitpick:

 _> (iOS7 will have multitasking for all apps)._

Not really. iOS7 allows more situations for the OS to wake up an app for a
short amount of time, but there's no real multitasking as in android where you
just write your service and stay running.

Aside of that, I agree with the article about strengths and weaknesses of the
two platforms. I've used both Android and iOS over time, but in the end, many
small things just let me prefer iOS, even though it's probably completely
subjective at this point.

The biggest lock-in to iOS is iMessage though and I hate Apple for that as it
makes it next to impossible for me to ever not use an iOS device as my phone
any more: When you move your SIM card from an iOS device to a non-iOS device,
there's a period of time during which Apple accepts iMessages for your number,
especially when you have other devices configured with iMessage. At this
point, people sending you an iMessage (it's not as if they get to chose) will
think that the message is delivered (it might even say "delivered"), when in
fact nothing the like has happened.

Worse: Even once this settles and apple's server stop accepting iMessages to a
number, now the sender will see green chat bubbles instead of blue ones. This
has caused me so much grief with non-technical iOS users, believing that
something went wrong with delivering the message, causing them to call me
after nearly every message they sent ("the bubble didn't look the same. did
you get my message?")

This is an ugly mess and I don't see any motivation for Apple to fix it as it
only punishes those who don't use iOS, never those using iOS.

The other big thing is visual voice mail which I really like and so far is not
supported by Android (aside of some crappy carrier specific apps) even though
in most cases it's just audio-files-over-imap that's powering the secret sauce
under iOS.

~~~
recursive
Google Talk isn't carrier specific.

~~~
pilif
Google Talk isn't available where I live.

------
dmix
Paul Stamatiou wrote specifically about his experience with 4.2.

The author having not used Android 4 makes this a very poor analysis. I also
hated Android <3.0 and loved iOS for years.

Then I bought S3 (and now S4) with Android 4.2 and the improvement was
massive. Android only recently got their shit together (design & performance
wise) and it's now very competitive with iOS. Arguably much better in favor of
Android if you're a hacker.

Cyanogenmod is very easy to install. There's no reason to be locked into old
versions because of your smartphone vendor (assuming you're moderately
technically savvy).

~~~
bozhidar
Not having used Android 4? As noted in the article I installed it manually on
my Xperia Arc (CyanogenMod)... I've also played with Android 4.2 quite a lot -
but then again that was not the point of the article.

------
vectorpush
I bought my first Android (Galaxy S4) a couple months back, before that I'd
only owned iPhones. For me, Android has been a superior experience in _almost_
every way. I could talk about a few dozen different aspects, but one that
really sticks out... The browser experience.

Chrome and Firefox alone were enough to make the switch worth it for me.
Firefox extensions are just as rich as on the desktop, private browsing is
quick and seamless, I also really enjoy the tab sharing between devices in
Chrome. Tabs stay open all day and don't refresh every time I switch an app,
files I download manifest themselves onto a file system I can easily consume
with a USB cable. It just feels like a real browser experience, whereas iOS
feels like a joke in comparison.

------
JonFish85
You're saying there are tradeoffs to different platforms? No shit. Like
anything else in life, it all depends on your situation. Whether it's
programming languages, car you drive, food you eat, etc. Want a phone that's
expensive but "just works"? Buy an iPhone. Want a phone that has the ability
to do interesting wacky things? Buy an unlocked Android phone. Phone wars are
stupid (in the "X is better / no, Y is better" sense).

~~~
pmelendez
> "Want a phone that has the ability to do interesting wacky things? Buy an
> unlocked Android phone"

For that matter, I actually would prefer install ubuntu or firefox OS on it.

~~~
bouk
... which are both currently only possible on a bootloader unlocked Android
phone

~~~
pmelendez
Well Ubuntu Edge is coming up and I believe Firefox's ZTE Open is already out
in several countries, so maybe that statement is only true in USA.

------
jjindev
While the author attempts to view the world as a user, I think many of his bad
experiences are early adopter woes. Given that most people didn't have smart
phones in those early days, I'm not sure ancient history matters.

In the long term it will be a battle between mature and slowly changing
phone/tablet OSes. Apple knows this, which is why they are desperately
designing watches.

~~~
Zigurd
It struck me as very odd to be pissed about app developers not supporting
early versions of Android - all the way back to the Android 1.x to 2.x
transition. Most of the early customers just stuck with the app versions that
were available to them and didn't know or care about lack of back-ports.

------
pmelendez
I have an experience similar to OP's. I had been user of four platforms
(Blackberry, iOS, Android, Windows Phone 8) and all of them have benefits and
caveats.

I only differ with OP in the fact that he pretty much blames device makers in
the android case, and I think that the problem is more than just the device,
at least that was the case before Ice cream sandwich, and at that point I was
just done with Android.

------
badman_ting
I thought that was the point of Marco's post as well, but I'm sure it got
interpreted as "Apple is better, nyah nyah"

------
da_n
> you’re trusting an advertising company with all your personal data :-)

Although this is probably my single biggest gripe with Android, you should
employ just as little trust in any of the big tech companies at this point;
Apple, Microsoft, Amazon etc are all openly deceiving their customers. As
Steve Gibson says, trust no one.

------
mark_l_watson
I like having one of each, more fun that way. I use a Galaxy S III and an iPad
mini - love them both.

Using a few services like DropBox and Evernote eliminates some of the down-
side of using two portable devices.

------
Moto7451
Sadly cell phone OS choices have become something that straddles the divide
between a holy war and a football rivalry. I simply don't understand it.

------
dylangs1030
This exactly echoes Marco Arment's "Google Blindness" post. I'm sure a lot of
people read "Android is Better" and "Google Blindness" and perceived a direct
thesis-antithesis relationship, but that wasn't the case. He actually proposed
a compromise view in the middle that (surprise) _different people like
different things._

Different strokes for different folks and all that.

I'm also disappointed by everyone succumbing to the usual flame war-ish
ideologies surrounding iOS and Android. One does not _need_ to be better than
the other. You can develop for both. Developing on either one has strategic
advantages and disadvantages, and you can always port to the other later
(okay, almost always).

It's so annoying that people attempt to crunch all the arguments for and
against each operating system into a binary response to using either one. It's
childish and uninformed.

------
YeahKIA
Why does this whole thing reminds me of this:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsQxaNKWFfA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsQxaNKWFfA)

