Disdainful that Android has no developers? Stop it right now

One of the proof texts iOSaddicts employ to defend the popularity of their JesusPhone is that the Android third-party development system is in shambles. Some of the factoids(*) over which they eulogize Androids include these:

• Android OS releases are too fragmented, unlike iOS, which sychronizes every iPhone and iPad. Mostly true, although older devices suffer from fewer new functions from new iOS releasees. But Google has worked to ensure that fragmentation no longer matters to third-party development.

• Android hardware is too fragmented, unlike the consistent specs among the limited number of iPhone and iPad models. No longer true, becuase of (a) Apple's release this year of inconsistent hardware models, and (b) Google's release last year of Android 4, which merges the smartphone-oriented Android 2 with the tablet-oriented Android 3.

• There are few Android tablet apps. This is the biggeset lie that Apple executives continue to repeat, because Android OS was designed to be resolution-independent, unlike iOS, and so Android smartphone apps don't need to be rewritten for tablets, unlike iOS. Nearly every Android smartphone app is also an Android tablet app; Android app store doesn't need to segregate apps the way that Apple's app store must.  I don't believe the line that Jobs invented the tablet before the phone, because otherwise iOS would have been written with future expansion to tablets in mind; but it wasn't.

• I see everybody using iPhones and iPads. The statistics released this week put this factoid to rest; only 15% of smartphone users worldwide use an iPhone and 50% use an iPad, with the growth numbers putting iOS hardware at a great disadvantage from now on. It only looks like everyone is using an Apple product, because all models look the same, unlike the rich variety of styles users get with Android products. 

• Developers don't develop for Android. Not any more. Matt Asay of The Register reports today that the number of developers is now even in both camps, but that the number of new Android developers is growing by four orders of magnitude -- 35,000%. As Solidworks marketing used to be fond of saying, It's the number of employment ads that counts, and here Android is winning, too.

• Haters are going to hate. This factoid repeated by iOSaddicts sums up the iOSaddict attitude perfectly. 

Open wins.

____________________

(*) Factoid: "an item of unreliable information that is repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact."

 

Comments

[Starfox]

- "The statistics released this week put this factoid to rest; only 15% of smartphone users worldwide use an iPhone and 50% use an iPad"

That's false. You're mixing up user base and market share (for one and only one quarter).

- "Nearly every Android smartphone app is also an Android tablet app"

And as a result, almost 100% of the Android "tablet apps" are actually blown-up smartphone apps. It may look OK on a 7", but certainly not on a 10". When you ease the life of the developpers, you often complicate the life of the end users.

[Ralph Grabowski]

Android smartphone apps are not "blown up" on tablets. This is the effect you get on iPads.

For instance, Instragram on iPad runs in a tiny window, or else the user can blow it up to run it in fuzzy full-screen mode.

On Android tablets, smartphone apps look clear and clean. Sometimes there is extra space in the UI, but I would say that more white space is preferable to the blurry look iPhone apps suffer from.

I find that iOS users suffer from many misconceptions about Android, as fed to them by Apple marketing through online publications. Because I use both platforms, I understand the disadvantages and advantages of each one.

[NAK]

Why is a CAD blog so focused on this ios vs droid war? There are quite a few viable operating systems at the phone, tablet, and even pc levels. Depending on whether you're courting the power user, the everyman, or a specific niche, it may make sense to work with one or all of them.

I don't think ios is better than android, but it has both pros and cons. If you want to be taken seriously as an analyst, I think it makes sense to print both sides of the story in an unbiased view.

[Ralph Grabowski]

Easy! It's my blog and I can obsess over whatever I want to. (I am not an analyst; I am a freelance writer.) Like you, I use both, but...

But I am writing this series to counter the misinformation Apple marketing spreads about the apparent shortcomings of Android -- factoids that the general media and computing sites mindlessly repeat. Like the one about there not being "enough" apps for Android tablets.

[Arnold van der Weide]

Teigha® from the Open Design Alliance is available on both iOS and Android. Some of our members are building applications for iOS and some on Android or on both operating systems depending on their target markets. We are also porting Teigha to Windows 8 again because there is demand in the ODA membership. In my view it is too early to establish who will be the market leader.
For myself I have two iPads, an Android based smartphone and an Android based tablet. There isn’t much difference can do my work on either of them but am convinced that I am using my last Windows based laptop.

[Kevin E.]

I agree with the app scaling to an extent.

However, with larger screens, it makes sense to use that space dfferently. Simply scaling the app to fit the space isn't an effective use of the layout. You have room to do more with a tablet UI. You can do things that don't make sense on smaller phone screen.

[Preston Roberson]

According to me I came to know that there is many employees are waiting o be as Android Developer and whatever lacking in the Android system is being improved by new version updation.