Yeah, I would respectfully disagree with your assessment.
Making software is a business. An investment. To reap maximum rewards on
that investment the product has to have as much reach as possible,
meaning the OP is absolutely on point about OS upgrades. Who is going to
spend 10k, 100k, 1m, etc, developing an app whose target market is less
than 1% of active installs? 4.0 won't be an attractive target for
developers until it commands at least 80% of the installed market, which
will likely take at least a year to occur, perhaps longer.
Comparing handset differences with browser difference is just absurd.
How many browser versions are there? Five maybe six? An average Android
app has to deal with over 600 different devices today. That's a
difference of 100x. This number is also growing at an exponential rate,
so even if you can manage to test on all of those devices, in three
months you'll probably have to do the same number again.
What you're apparently not appreciating is that unlike the PC/Mac world,
the Android world lacks strong compatibility standards and more
importantly, conformance testing. As a consequence, devices tend to have
niggling and chronic differences that in aggregate make for an
inconsistent and unstable feel for the platform. You really have to have
a very large operation or have a very unambitious app to make an app
with long reach in the Android world.
By contrast, the Apple approach is that one size fits all. From a small
or independent developers perspective this really is preferable, because
you know if you test it and it works on one device it's going to work on
all of them, and there are millions of them out there. You simply don't
have that guarantee in Android. It's no accident that the most
profitable app market is to be found on Apple devices.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not an Apple fan. But having spent considerable
time fighting with device peculiarities in the Android ecosystem instead
of adding features to my app, I find that I long for the simplicity that
the Apple ecosystem guarantees.
On 10/28/2011 12:01 AM, Studio LFP wrote:
Eh, it's not that bad.
If you look at the history of developers, we're already use to having
to deal with a lot worse fragmentation issues than Android. Anyone
that's ever developed a website correctly knows that supporting the
available web browsers is a lot more of a challenge than with Android
versions.
Windows, Mac OSX, a ton of server technologies, databases, etc., they
all have tons of different versions available to support. Most
companies stick with older versions because it is what they have and
it is working. When it comes to Android, I've been pleasantly
surprised at the efforts Google has gone through to help manufacturers
upgrade. Even though 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 are different, they aren't so
much different that in most cases you can't treat them as 2.x. It
seems to me that Android is more broken up in 1.x, 2.x, 3.x and now
4.x instead of the individual versions themselves.
I'd rather a little fragmentation in Android than for them to pull an
Apple and everyone is the exact same, right down to the hardware
level. Variety is something we need in the mobile market, not a one
device fits all concept.
Steven
Studio LFP
http://www.studio-lfp.com
On Thursday, October 27, 2011 10:36:24 AM UTC-5, Greg Donald wrote:
http://theunderstatement.com/post/11982112928/android-orphans-visualizing-a-sad-history-of-support
<http://theunderstatement.com/post/11982112928/android-orphans-visualizing-a-sad-history-of-support>
Wow.. I knew it was bad, but man.
"most app developers will end up targeting an ancient version of the
OS in order to maximize market reach."
I totally agree.. It will literally be years before I will begin to
care about the new 4.0. I'm still supporting devices running 2.1 and
will be for some time to come.
--
Greg Donald
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