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Comment by jbigelow76 | Hacker News Reader

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jbigelow76

Why aren't Apple and Google making it this easy to develop apps?

Apple has no incentive to make it easier for app developers to port their code to other platforms.

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Has Apple ever chosen a non-native app for its annual design awards?

was there ever non-native app worth a reward?

You mean not including the vast number of Unity based games that are there?

But it does have incentive for app developers on other platforms to port code to their own platform.

They incentivize people porting to iOS by being a great platform with tons of customers, many of which are willing to pay. That's why so many apps launch on iOS first (much to my dismay as a diehard Android user).

Why Google hasn't done this, I don't know. Seems like it is in their best interest and something they're already doing internally. They use the shared web/Android/iOS code concept for Inbox (but not HTML/JS)[1] and probably other projects.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/11/how-go...

Dont they use this j2objc? https://github.com/google/j2objc

Apple probably doesn't concern itself with any developers that don't want to be on their platform. In fact they probably find the notion so inconceivable that they wouldn't see any value in that developer's app.

Are there any "unicorn" apps that are Android only and intend to stay that way?

> Are there any "unicorn" apps that are Android only and intend to stay that way?

Chrome? Also Gmail, Google Now, and Facebook Messenger on iOS are garbage compared to Android.

Chrome?

I could be wrong but I am pretty sure I am typing this response in Chrome on a Windows box right now, so maybe not the best example of an Android only app.

I figured we were talking in the context of Android vs. iOS.

Fair enough. But even Chrome missing from iOS is mostly just an annoyance to tech types. Nobody is trading in their iPhone for a Nexus just to get Chrome, it's not the same as when Instagram was iOS only.

Chrome is available on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/chrome/id15979771

It's just stuck being the Chrome around UIWebView instead of fully featured Chrome, which is unfortunate.

Chrome is available on the App store, friend.

Absolutely and I don't think any other company could think in this way and succeed as wildly as Apple have.

Torque Pro[1] -- it's the reason I bought my first Android phone. On the flip side, there's ForeFlight[2].

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.prowl.torq... [2] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/foreflight-mobile/id33325263...

Sure, but that works in reverse. People could easily port their code TO iOS.

Unfortunately everyone writes iOS first nowadays because rich people overwhelmingly own iOS devices.

You could probably replace "rich" by "people willing to pay money for apps". Although even on iOS this is less and less true.

That, and because development is way easier.

I'm curious why you say that.

You have to learn a whole new Apple-only programming language to do iOS (Swift or Objective-C) in addition to the iOS framework/libraries. Not to mention buying a Mac and paying Apple $100 for a developer account.

Android, on the other hand, was pretty straightforward to get started with for me as someone with Java experience.

Getting started is one thing, completing a product is another. It's not an uncommon metric to apply a 1.5x or 2x multiplier to the development time of an iOS app to obtain the time to develop the Android one. I would also argue that from the same starting point (no java experience and no Swift experience) the learning curve is way smoother on iOS, with more fine tuned APIs and better tools (interface builder can be picked up easily by a designer with no coding background).

Perhaps, but most studies show that they start on iOS to begin with.

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