Onomp, I think I get the gist of what you are worried about. I think all of us sort of have that fear... will Android survive with so many buggy apps out there and with more and more mom/dad/non-geeky people adopting android phones, downloading these potentially problem apps, seeing them crash, and get frustrated and leave... will Android survive through all this? I too have had this thought from time to time. It is going to happen. People are going to get android phones, realize they aren't iPhones.. and leave. It already happens. People are going to see that android devices, while no harder than other smart phones and offers a lot more to boot, can be difficult at times. After all, android devices are essentially a dumbed down computer. It runs multiple things at once, and sometimes those things crash.
There are a few things for you to consider tho, before you give up on Android as a platform to develop for. First, most PC owners are Windows users.. and we all know the never ending jokes of blue screens, crashes, etc. I think most users are familiar with program crashes to some extent. It will look different in Android.. a Force Close message is not exactly non-geek friendly, but most users these days will have a rough idea that the app crashed, and either to restart it, or possibly to go to their computer and look up the issue. Some people will get pissed and eventually leave. It will happen. I think what you are possibly overlooking is that the world of phones has drastically changed the past couple years, but that most end users have not yet stepped up to them. Billions of cell phones, only a 100 million or so smart phones. Prob < 5% of the world wide market is smart phones at this point, but it's rapidly changing. It will be a few more years before the majority of people are used to the idea of a phone that can do everything their computer can... that you can download apps and play games, read the news, an e-book, stocks, connect to your email, company vpn, etc. It's catching on quick tho. So like the 80s and 90s when people slowly adopted PCs (and Macs to a much lesser extent), the pains we all went through with blue screens, and random reboots.. we're doing it again with smart phones, only smart phones are a lot better at handling these issues. It will just take some time for the mass consumers to get used to this new way of communicating, playing, using, and understanding the issues that may crop up. As for Android going away.. I honestly worried about the same thing. I thought..man.. there are a LOT of issues with Android as a whole. The market app is taking too long for updates.. we should be able to better filter apps.. why not a way to allow us to see only 4 star apps with over 5000 downloads for example? It's a very easy thing to do... google has all the data, a simple query can pull that info and allow us to get more detailed filtering on apps we may want ... or want to avoid. But, Android is far from going anywhere. Despite it's flaws, like others said, it's an evolving beast. It's going to get a LOT better. Froyo (2.2) in my opinion bumps up Android devices to beyond iPhone, with the exception of games/music apps and user interface. Part of what you are seeing and worried about is what drives iPhone so well. The user interface on iPhone is the best, period. I personally like the Android one better, but the majority of people including Android users will say the iPhone interface is about as easy as it gets. There new iOS4 with multi tasking should make it better. However, for the same reason a lot of developers are leaving iPhone for Android.. the openness of Android, we're going to see a lot of "painful" initial learning curves on the market. I can't tell you how many threads I see in here and on other android forums of people who want to write a game, and have no idea what Java is. It's scary how many developers with almost no experience are coming out of the woodwork to build a game for Android. It's both scary, yet good too.. because that means you have a huge interest in the development of Android apps. I bought my Droid in November, there were 5000 apps on the market. Now there are over 55,000 7 months later. In a year, we'll be up to 150,000 apps. That can be a good thing IF the market app itself improves and allows more filtering options, but I am sure you're worried that the bulk of those are going to be horribly bad apps, and most end users won't know, and will get scared and return their android phones and thus the android market will shrink. I think the opposite tho.. I think.. .well, I hope that what we see in Froyo.. the new google free service that developers can now log in and see the full stack trace + comments of a crashed app, will only improve in many ways. The biggest thing that urks me right now with regards to the market is how fast your app can stop being downloaded based on user feedback. There is no way to really respond to user feedback in the market... so even if you get a bad comment, and you fix a bug and want to, you can't comment back in a threaded manner that shows you are a good developer, fixing your issues, supporting the users. The current market comment system in my opinion is the single biggest downfall to the market right now, and it could be fixed pretty easily. Allow developers to respond so like you see in blogs, a "comments.." link is there below the first comment, and a user can see if a developer responded, fixed it, etc. As well, allow consumers to remove their comments, or edit them. I may really like an app, but it keeps crashing on my Droid.. so I post a 1 star feedback and a comment that it crashes all the time on my Droid. Developer responds with a comment about looking into it, then fixes the issue, submits an update.. I get it, try it out again, it works, I can then go back and edit my comment, re-rate the app.. and my 1 star becomes a 4 star. That would greatly improve the ratings of apps too. If I leave 8 comments, all 1 stars, then I leave 1 comment with a 5 star.. there are still those 8 1 stars that are hurting that apps overall score. It's a flawed system and I hope google fixes that in particular, as it will greatly help apps chances of survival. Right now, much like on iPhone.. if you download, dont like, rate it bad, and never check back.. and more people do this.. an app will eventually not get downloaded. Even if the developer fixes it, updates, etc.. they lost all those users who no longer have the app installed. They'll never get the updates or notices. It's a crappy way to run the market right now, and Android has the chance of really fixing this issue. Anyway, bit long winded.. don't give up. Try to ride it out and see if you can influence others... make it better. Perhaps someone at google will read this or other threads like this and maybe they are looking at ways to make it better. On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 10:02 AM, theSealPortalTeam < thesealportalt...@gmail.com> wrote: > I'm sorry but, I have an Andorid phone and never had a problem after > the most recent release. Just like anything, perfecting an operating > system takes time and patience. I'm very proud of what Google has done > to open up mobile development, in fact many developers would agree > with me. Android is not dieing, its evolving. > > Without the openness of Andorid, developing for a mobile platform > would be difficult as it was in the past. > > On Jun 8, 11:36 am, Onomp <avtsolution...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Unless google implements a way to track the force closings of > > applications (maybe even phone specific) and has a market for flawless > > programs and seperates the the ones which still need work, all of your > > application ideas will be stolen by the competitors working for the > > other OS's and as android takes off and the consumers feel the devices > > are too bugged, android will die, your work and learnings will be for > > nothing. > > > > Anyone else agree? > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Android Developers" group. > To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com<android-developers%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com> > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. 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