I find it kinda amazing how rumor becomes mythology which eventually morphs into accepted fact. Apple has good relationships with game developers. They may not kowtow to egomaniacs, and it always seems a roll of the dice whether a given iteration of hardware compromises results in a pan or a plug from carmack.

I develop apps. This is how I make my living. It would take a complete reversal of apple's attitudes and directions to get me to develop for android. Apple treats me well, pays me on time, and has a viable market where the rules are consistent and reasonable.

Apple treats game developers well. Apple embraced OpenGL way back in the day so that developers could write to one API and deploy on multiple platforms (even Linux, presumably) This isn't Java, of course, but then, Apple also supported Java completely until it became obvious Java had lost in the marketplace (or market segment.)

Apple provides great APIs and functionality to support games on iOS. Maybe Google will catch up, but they're still working on allowing native development.

But this subscription thing is a perfect example of the disconnect between android lovers and reality. Apple has offered a new mechanism to make payments to developers. Do you think developers are angry about this? You think we're switching to android because Apple allows us to sell our software by subscriptions? Why would we be angry? This gives us more flexibility, and saves us the hassle of setting up paypal or whatever.... I've got thousands of customers, and I can assure you, less than a fraction of a percent of them visit my website.

As a developer for and a user of iOS this just furthers Apple's value to me.

I've considered porting apps to Android. I'm not inclined to because I'd rather spend the time making new apps in a market I know is viable for my type of apps.

To win me over, Android would need to: 1) Provide native development (in progress) 2) provide a level of APIs and frameworks of comperable quality to Cocoa touch 3) provide a hardware reference platform and require android licensees to build to it (apparently impossible) 4) develop enough of a market of that common reference platform such that I can develop no more than 2 variations and address >%90 of the market (I develop two versions for iOS an iPad and an iPhone version.) 5) Provide a market where I can sell internationally, where people can easily buy my product, and where people are in the habit of doing so. Right now that's three things the android market doesn't offer.