Why do apps from the same company look worse on Android than on iPhone?
android-gripes.tumblr.com
android-gripes.tumblr.com
I'm an iPhone UI designer/developer and you can make a really nice looking app without doing any custom design work just by using the widgets that Apple provides. A good example of an app that was nearly all stock is Tweetie 1 for iPhone and it won an Apple Design Award. Apple has put an incredible amount of polish (single-pixel highlights and shadows, consistent sheen/gloss across elements, built-in animations for common interactions) into the widgets as part of UIKit, and then the apps that are included on the iPhone are also incredibly polished. This sets the bar very high and also gives a quality of UI design that developers can look up to and try to emulate.
The apps that Google built for Android (Maps in particular) are very clean and elegant but I would hesitate to call them beautiful or extremely polished. Google's design aesthetic typically eschews gradients, sheen, highlights and shadows in favor of a flatter, cleaner look and feel. Although Google's Android apps are well-designed, they don't look like a team of visual designers hand-crafted each and every corner like Apple's apps and UIKit widgets seem to be. Because of this cleaner, simpler aesthetic, the bar for "good-looking" on Android is a lot lower than for iPhone and it seems companies will cut corners on Android app UI design & visual polish because of it.
Another theory is that companies might feel that Android phone owners are more technical, more geeky, and thus "don't need" a really polished interface so they spend fewer resources on it. Once a few big companies release Android apps with a sub-par design, other companies see this and follow suit, continuing the trend forwards. Obviously this is a difficult stigma to get out of, but some companies are putting out great Android apps -- Gowalla comes to mind -- so there is hope.
To me, the last paragraph reads along the lines of "Silly person, engineers can't design. Only a designer can add polish to something. Go back to your coding hole and don't even bother trying." Which is bullshit.
// edit: To clarify, a good app should most definitely have a designer, and a UI framework on the scale of Android's should have many, for sure. I'm just objecting to how the tone of the last paragraph felt.
Built in OS UI is not a factor here. I suspect budget isn't either.
Edit: Here's the link to their Android app. The screen you see is basically the whole app. Click on anything and you're sent to their mobile web http://www.cnbc.com/id/37130092/
Here's the iPhone app http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cnbc-real-time/id334125582?mt... It's hard to believe the same company released both apps.
Even their official "Apps" page has little mention of the Android app http://www.cnbc.com/id/33077961 It's just a tiny link at the bottom that I didn't notice the first time.
There are, however, so many possible reasons why Android versions get the shaft that it's nearly impossible to say why any given pair of apps are so different in quality. It could be that it's easier to find iOS devs that really care about UX and polish (lots of self-selection going on here, similar to Mac/Windows third-party devs). It could be that a company asks their iOS dev to knock out an Android version, when they're not competent at developing for the platform. It could be that the folks in charge of getting mobile apps made for their company just like iPhones more (not a stretch, given demographic differences) or see them as more hip or marketable and funnel more money that way. Or, it could be that, after spending lavish amounts of money on the iPhone app and seeing it not set the world on fire, they scale back to merely "establishing a presence" on Android instead of making the same effort.
A lot of these behaviors wouldn't surprise me, particularly from companies whose primary business is not creating software.
The difference is possibly talent. They likely outsource the development to different companies; one who develops exclusively for the iPhone and the other for Android. Different teams of developers producing vastly different results. The iPhone ecosystem is more mature (and more picky) which could easily explain the differences.
My hunch is that we're starting to see a Windows/Mac differentiation here, with Android emerging as the clear winner of mobile and iOS being reserved for the trendy/artistic/quality crowd. That carries over into the apps themselves, with Android apps (like their windows counterparts) being clean and utilitarian, whereas iOS developers are devoting more time to making sure their app looks good.
Edit: The "quality" comment was not intended to suggest that Android lacks it, but rather that those who buy based upon perceived quality would be more likely to be drawn to the iPhone.
My take is that most purchasers of Android phones are probably quite disappointed with the experience. Whether it's because of battery life, lousy app selection, annoying add-ons by the carrier, or clunky app design.
Sure, slimy salespeople hired by the carriers are pushing Android phones and probably lying about features and quality just as they lie about plan details, etc. Yes they're selling a lot of (mediocre) phones to a lot of naive (or optimistic) people who trust the Google name based on their experience with search or gmail.
I predict a huge backlash as more and more consumers realize they were hoodwinked and should have just gone with an iPhone. Take the Evo 4G for example... the phone shipped unable to even last a whole day on a full charge (with moderate use). This is unconscionable. Clearly nobody who was in a postion to do something about this test drove one of the phones for a few days before moving forward with all the hype and marketing.
I think this will all bite Google when few people decide to upgrade to a new Android phone. The experience is so mediocre that even a few minutes playing with an iPhone, browsing the app store, or talking to the owner about battery life will cause tremendous buyers remorse.
They're not app consumers to the slightest degree. Android represents a small value-add over the dumbphones they had before, which is fine, but they're not part of the vast army that Android partisans seem to think is coming over the next hill.
This segues to arguments that have a freshness dating. Android used to have crap hardware (the G1 was junk). Now it has amazing hardware. Android used to have no apps. Now it has an unbelievable number of apps, and almost all of the top tier apps. Android used to be a duct-tape clunky mess. Now (Gingerbread) it's a completely different beast: It is actually a loveable operating system.
So if Android made most of its gains when it was a shadow of what it is now, what are the detractors left with?
I've heard of portable media players or Nooks that run Android but don't have app stores (though the Nook is getting one). I've heard of tablets that don't have the official Google Market, though they often have an alternative market and relatively simple steps for the user to get the Market on to them. There's even 0.4% of "Android" phones that are running OPhone and so while they can run Android apps fine, they don't come with the Google apps or Marketplace, but again they have alternatives.
Do you have any links to what you mean by this?
From last September, 65% of Android users are "very satisfied": http://www.therealmacgenius.com/2010/10/iphone-os-or-android.... That's less than the iPhone's 74%, but a far cry from the fanboy fantasy of Android being abandoned in droves.
I'm actually rooting for Google. I'd just like to see them take the overall usability and build quality a lot more seriously than they appear to be taking it. It's completely absurd that carriers are installing things like a clock with hands which prevent the phones from being instantly upgradeable when a new version of Android is released.
Android gives carriers a lot of perverse incentives, most of which they appear to be following quite religiously.
It's completely absurd that carriers are installing things like a clock with hands which prevent the phones from being instantly upgradeable when a new version of Android is released.
No question that the carriers are doing significant damage to Android's perception. I don't think the skins are a huge contributor to update delays, for example the G2 runs stock Android but still won't get a Gingerbread update until some vague future date. You're absolutely right about the incentive problem; as long as customers are locked into contracts via phone subsidies, there's little motivation to keep them satisfied.
In the Eclaire days, with sparse apps and a clunky, half-broken OS, you were absolutely right.
Today, however, you couldn't be further off the mark. A Gingerbread phone is a delightful, delightful beast. The app selection and quality has improved at a blistering pace.
I think this will all bite Google when few people decide to upgrade to a new Android phone. The experience is so mediocre that even a few minutes playing with an iPhone, browsing the app store, or talking to the owner about battery life will cause tremendous buyers remorse.
You mention the Evo yet EVERY SINGLE REVIEW criticized the battery life. How could you possibly not know about that?
Experience so mediocre? Your obsolete bias shows through. I would argue that a good Froyo device, or a normal Gingerbread phone, provides a far better experience to most users.
This page is thinly veiled fanboyism (and, unsurprisingly, was linked by Gruber, which speaks volumes). Worse, it isn't even CORRECT -- they used both an ancient Meebo app, and an ancient Facebook app, to demonstrate their poorly-demonstrated-anyways point. I would seriously consider Marcos Arment as a suspect behind it: His desperation has grown obvious.
A larger user base doesn't necessarily imply that the same user base is a larger source of revenue. There's a bunch of anecdotal evidence that indicates iOS users are more likely to purchase apps than are Android users.
Revenue is revenue, whether you get it via a purchase or via eyeballs. If companies are getting less revenue from Android users vs iOS users then there's little reason for them to invest more in making their Android ports look as nice or function as well as their iOS ports.
Despite the apparent swing in popularity of my original statement, I stand by it. Android is looking more and more what Windows was in the early 90s. It doesn't matter how many iOS users purchase apps; if the Android market share is significantly large it will still be the more profitable platform to develop for.
The reason I replied to your post is that I disagree with the "Android will be utilitarian/iOS will be artsy" assertion as being caused only by market share or user expectations (though I think user expectations are also a huge factor). My belief is that one major, current reason why iOS apps are of higher quality is not just because iOS users expect higher quality apps, but also because iOS users generate more total revenue for companies, providing a better ROI. If/when that shifts in favor of Android, those apps may become the higher quality versions.
As for what happens in the future, it's anyone's guess. Heck, it's entirely possible for Android to crush iOS in terms of market share but to still generate less total revenue for companies if no Android users actually install 3rd party apps. I don't expect that to happen, but it's certainly possible.
I think that's a fair point, and one I'll readily concede. My assertion is that, moving forward, we're likely to see that key metric shift in Android's favour, barring some massie swing in adoption numbers.
OS market share is the easy metric, but it's not the right metric. Read the last six paragraphs:
http://expletiveinserted.com/2011/04/02/ios-versus-android-o...
Applying the Windows/Mac analogy to the mobile market is like trying to cram modern geopolitics into a cold war framework. You'll ruin your mind trying to make it work. Google isn't Microsoft, Android isn't Windows, and smartphones aren't purchased or used like desktop computers.
Apple is still Apple, which confuses people, I'll admit.
It makes about as much sense as lumping in Apple's laptops or Samsung's TVs and the text only occasionally seems to recognize this, almost as if they drew the graphs thinking they referred to smartphones and then lightly edited the text rather than remove them when they realised their mistake. Makes them difficult to take seriously.
Also, the share growth for all phones is relevant, because smartphones are almost certainly the largest component of that. Absent a breakdown of Samsung's growth by phone category, the most generous way to evaluate their smartphone share growth is to make the simplifying assumption that all of Samsung's growth comes from smartphones. Even then, their growth is a fraction of iPhone's growth and the point is made.
What you seem to be missing is that makers of both types of phone are losing share in dumbphones, even as they gain share in the more lucrative smartphone market.
If you had numbers for smartphones only, it's likely that about 4 or 5 companies would have higher growth than Apple. Almost certainly in the case of the second graph, because Apple has a higher marketshare and the same mathmatical trick that makes them look good against the Samsung who sell 1 in 4 phones, would make them look bad against the samsung that used to have 5% of the smartphone market but are catching up to and probably overtaking Apple soon.
But seriously, read what I wrote in the post. This internal shift of mix between smartphones and dumbphones, or the rise of many Android manufacturers who aren't in the top 5 (e.g. HTC) is exactly the point. I wonder whether the intent of the "switchers" from dumbphone to smartphones all have the same intent to run apps.
I also noted and amplified the rapid Android share growth using the same "mathematical trick" you mention.
Of course, what people now tell me is "but that's a bad phone" - and I think that's the problem that Android faces - the actual end user experience is largely determined by the quality of the hardware and this varies a lot.
Of course, we're all scientists, engineers, programmers who recently took a course in Android programming, so my experience probably isn't standard :)
If you compare iOS to Android, I think you see the same pattern. One of the reasons the iPhone is so popular is because of the apps, many of which just aren't available on Android. Even when an app is available for Android it often feels like a second class citizen, or an after thought - just as it often does on the Mac.
When I look at the mobile world in this light it seems like we should be comparing iOS to Windows and Android to OSX, but then again maybe I'm just reading into the analogy too much.
The Mac selection frankly feels way better and bigger to me. I would go even further and claim that the main advantage of OSX over Windows is the app selection in both quality and quantity!
"I think the main reason many people end up using Windows over OSX, or any other OS, has always been the knowledge of software."
Like how to do X in software Y, or what software can one obtain to do task Z.
Probably the Mac App Store changes that, and certainly the perception of it. Also even timid users are much more inclined to go and ask stuff on the Internet, and not solely rely on their inner circle.
Canonical knew that even before the App Store singularity and tried to design a simple user-centric application finder in Ubuntu, alongside the very technical Synaptics package manager. Also they tried to push users to ask questions on forums on the very first page Firefox displays.
They're basically predicting the same early lead then loss of market share, then mindshare will happen again, not saying that it's already happened.
Also, note that the "Mac users spend more money on software" argument was very popular, even (or indeed, especially) in the bleakest of dark times for the Mac platform. Meanwhile, software that was given away for free and/or relied on network effects (Skype, Firefox, various P2P things) generally started and focused on Windows, because that's where the people were.
Is this even true? There are more adroid devices than iOS devices (iPhone, iPod, iPad)?
Where are they? I read this statement all the time, but I barely know anyone who has an android phone. Not a scientific measurement, but still ...
"Android emerging as the clear winner of mobile and iOS being reserved for the trendy/artistic/quality crowd"
I really disagree with this statement. First, you can't generalize iOS buyers like this, but more importantly, how do you define winner? Market share? Phones with Android installed on them? How many of these Android users are buying apps?
As a developer, the only measurement I care about is how many of potential buyers of my app are there. Android might have more installed OSes, but iOS has more app buyers.
That's the real reason you see companies focused on iPhone app development and not Android app development.
Your post is very confusing.
At first you seem to imply that good design is tied to the amount of shadows, gradients or highlights and that a "clean, elegant" design is somehow worse. Yet later you say that Google's apps are well-designed...
Why not use accurate design concepts if you claim that you are a designer? Say exactly what's wrong with the design by pointing out which design rules were broken.
You can have a well designed app that isn't necessarily beautiful.
All Google stuff is by definition not beautiful, that doesn't mean it's not well designed.
When we're talking about "graphic design", beauty automatically flows from good design and Google's products are simply not well designed. And they will not be, because they micro-optimize for what brings more users.
All discussion about design must be understood in context. The context here is the iPhone vs. Android GUI.
I responded to the claim that flyosity's comment was somehow contradictory. It's not. It's just a matter of understanding that design in this context isn't only about the beauty.
On the other hand, when you're dealing with dynamic layouts, you have to jump through a lot more hoops to make sure the app still looks good as the resolution is scaled up and down (e.g. creating a stretchable images and such and so forth).
I also think that Helvetica is a much nicer looking default font.
The real reasons that apps looks worse on Android is that companies don't want to spend the time and money to get the apps polished. As an Android consultant I've come across the attitude from companies over and over again that the Android app should cost less money than the iPhone counterpart. The Android app is always an afterthought and treated as "let's just do a quick port of the iPhone app".
It certainly does not help that Google's dashboard for screen and density figures has not been updated in over half a year.
As far as your second point goes, I think that companies' attitudes to Android development will change to reflect the evolving marketplace. A year or two ago, Android just did not have the market share to justify a lot of work. Now that Android is commanding significant market share, I think Android development will begin to be seen to be as important as iOS development.
http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/screens.htm...
I think it takes a little longer to create cross-compatible assets than it would on iOS. If it's not an easily repeatable or stretchable asset, you have to think about how it will scale on different resolutions.
I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it costs more in time and money. Some companies won't be willing to accept that cost and will just cut corners.
I also note that the HN account that submitted this link was created immediately before submitting it, and that's their only activity.
I was considering responding to the flame bait in his closing paragraph ("Is it because iPhone developers are better at user interface design?" etc.) until I realized what I was looking seemed to have about a 99% chance of being corporate sponsored astroturfing. FTC disclosure, Apple?
[1] "Want to install "open" apps on Android? Think twice", "Is Samsung’s New Galaxy Tab Fibbing About Its Figure?", "J-P Teti: The iPad is 99% more open than any other computer", "'openness' considered harmful, said by Google on Honeycomb source code", "Everything that can go wrong with Motorola Android tablet does", "Android is sure a Wi-Fi connection dropper", etc.
Paranoid, much? Even if you believe Apple has any need to do something like this, I think we can agree it would probably be done in a more subtle and effective manner than sponsoring an "Android gripes" blog that essentially nobody reads.
Given the number of Apple fan boys out there, and how friendly the media as a whole is to their cause, do you really think they would view the potential benefits of astroturfing as greater than the potential damage it would do to their brand?
It's not a matter of good or evil. It's a matter of smart vs. dumb.
* a 99% chance of being corporate sponsored astroturfing*
This is an interesting possibility, but at the same time have you ever read the comments on gizmodo?
Apple doesn't need to astroturf when there are fanbois just -dying- to tell everyone how good their platform is and how poor the competition does. This blog could just easily be the product of such a fanboi, just with a bit more promotion, money, time & writing ability than the average gizmodo commenter.
Obviously I can't say for sure, readers need to make up their own minds.
A lot of it still seems pretty adolescent though, like the post wholly about the "Gmail" icon or throwaway lines about "14 years old’s feeling".
The Twitter account looks like someone is curating it but the facebook page just looks they enabled Tumblr's "Post to Facebook" feature and walked away.
I guess there's no way to be sure.
Making a Gmail / Twitter / Fb / Tumblr / etc. is standard for any website. There's nothing unusual about creating accounts on these other services as it's arguably an essential part of 'doing business' online.
(What is he implying? Assuming sarcasm - he is saying that it's not a coincidence but that some unnamed other parties claim it is. I don't really get it but it seems like he's getting too lazy to actually offer an extended argument these days)
And since there are no comments, he totally paints a one-sided story.
Anyway, the author of the blog has a response: http://android-gripes.tumblr.com/why
Edit: Imagine this blog was titled "iOS gripes" and talked about unjust bannings from the App Store. Would you suggest that Google was astroturfing?
It would be like me complaining that an iPhone kept annoying me by showing me nearby WiFi networks everywhere I went. You can flip the switch on that, too (and with the exact same level of effort). Complaining is just being willfully obtuse and insisting the rest of the world should set their defaults the way you want them.
XCode on Mac OS X is a delightful experience, with the right tools and the right amount of control to make good applications, supported by excellent tools to optimize the look/performance. The interface builder and the simulator are quite polished and greatly reduce the effort in tweaking the UI.
However, with ADT, I spend most of my time struggling with XML layout files, and heap dumps attempting to improve the application. The interface builder became usable only with the latest version of ADT, and even-so, I often find myself dropping down into the XML often. The simulator takes a long time to load and is quite sluggish. I find it far more convenient to have the application run on the device each time. However, this implies that code-compile-run cycle takes more time on ADT than on XCode.
In conclusion, the iOS development tools help me in finishing the application quicker, leaving me enough time (and providing me better tools) to polish the interface further.
e.g.
1) big down and up icons next to the down and up speeds, to reinforce the text at a glance. 2) The text "kilobits / sec" is a readable white, rather than mid-grey and isn't obscured by the indicator hand. 3) Though the text on the Apple one has been corrected to match the dial which now shows K or M, the currently measured speed is given without units. I had trouble differentiating between the "1.18" and the "58" immediately below it which appears to be an advertisement.
Also, isn't the Android one just the old iPhone interface. So is the argument that Android is so fundamentally flawed, that it makes apps magically look exactly like an iPhone app from 6 months ago?
Here's an iPhone 3GS and 4 screenshot showing it being basically indistinguishable from the Android one (except buttons were moved to the top):
http://itracki.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/181941-speedte...
Apple showcase of the controls that come out-of-the box and various ways to tweak them: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/userex...
Default Android controls for some reason sport a more "circa-1990 MS DOS" look. The developers need to actually invest time to re-skin the components or make their own to get a modern look. This is made slightly more difficult if you want to support multiple screen sizes/resolutions. As such, many Android apps sadly seem to end up with the default look.
(I have written apps for both platforms.)
If an app developer wants their phone to work on the whole range of Android phones, the app interface needs to cope with these very low resolution screens.
Google actually tracks screen sizes of devices that access Android Market:
http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/screens.htm...
It appears that 240x320 (small + low density) accounts for 2.3% of users.
While unrelated to UI, another very handy page tracks Android versions in use out there. It looks like 2.2 has become the most common version in the last month: http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-ve...
I have documented that iOS comes with scores of fonts available for Developers at http://iOSFonts.com at the same time (and someone correct me if I’m wrong) Android only has Droid Sans.
In many cases devs — and especially designers — for the mobile market are dog-fooding; they will likely use the iOS version of the app they make because they own the hardware themselves.
Google sets a low bar and a poor example for UX.
There are other factors, too. Some of which are that there is a higher ROI on iOS apps, a larger market share (when you count iPod touch as part of your audience), and an audience more likely to be concerned with quality.
This really shows in the Android App Market review comments - people who rate low mostly do so because of force closes, missing functions etc. (https://market.android.com/details?id=com.facebook.katana is a good case study.)
The other part is that iPhone has one resolution UI - Androids come in lots of different resolutions. So I think the amount of blank/white space and font sizes vary between different handsets and that makes some apps designed for low res UIs look a bit off on high res screens.
And frankly, I can't find anything worse looking in the examples the fanboi^W author presented and he doesn't seem to be making any real points as to why he thinks one was worse than other - apart from him just not liking anything other than iPhone UI.
I prefer the look of the Android Meebo contact list, but I prefer the iPhone chat interface.
Note that his Android Facebook app needs updating. The missing Chat & Places icons fill it up. I think I prefer the Android version - the white background makes it look more lighter and more spacious than the iPhone version.
I don't like either Speedtest app much at all. I prefer the tabs at the bottom from the iPhone version, but hate (hate!) that purple (!!) ad bar above it. OTOH, I hate the "Test Again" button on the Android version.
To me, from the apparent size of it, the Android one looks like hard to manipulate by touch. I don't want to feel like aiming each time I navigate. Also, probably the john@xyz filler with no user picture is part of the unsettlement. That point is valid of the Android one too, as it shows the user both offline, in buddies and in conversations. Weird.
That said, no developer in their right mind would ship such an emoticon picker. It's simply outrageous and just shows disdain to the user.
Apple users all have blogs about the virtues of serif fonts versus sans-serif fonts, so you are not going to sell your apps (or get ad views) if your app looks like crap. Therefore, paying the designer is worth the cost.
Also, Java programmers are a different demographic than Objective-C/Cocoa programmers. Java programmers mostly use Windows, which doesn't have a UI or "user experience". (The experience is mostly in removing spyware.) iPhone developers, by definition, can only use Apple products, thus self-selecting for people that care a little about UI.
Additionally, the finance doesn't really make sense for Android apps. Why would I waste 6 months of my time (which is around $100k) on an app that nobody will pay for when I could write bullshit software for an investment bank and get a guaranteed paycheck no matter what my UI looks like?
Android users get what they want: cheap. iPhone users get what they want: eye candy.
(Just to be clear, I love Android. But "user experience" doesn't mean much to me. As long as I can see my calendar and ssh to my machine at home over OpenVPN, I don't really care about anything else.)
As an Android (and iOS) developer, I would like to point out that one of the contributing factors to the lack of well-designed applications for Android is due to the lack of polish in the Android tools. XCode on Mac OS X is a delightful experience, with the right tools and the right amount of control to make good applications, supported by excellent tools to optimize the look/performance. However, with ADT, I spend most of my time struggling with XML layout files, and heap dumps attempting to improve the application.
Android users, on average, might well be somewhat more pragmatic than "design-addicted" Apple users, and settle with something that works instead of looks nice. They buy a phone to do their jobs, or communicate with their friends, but not (as much) to show off or worship it.
After all, they buy a (usually) cheaper phone.
Apple users all have blogs about the virtues of serif fonts versus sans-serif fonts
That made me laugh :)
Adobe doesn't sell most Photoshop licenses to individual users, they sell to businesses for whom the cost of pirating is not worth it. Windows licenses sold to individual users are dwarfed by Windows licenses sold to manufacturers, who buy it because that's what their customers expect. Opera gives away its various browsers, then uses the expertise and the satisfied customer base as arguments when licensing preloaded versions to manufacturers. Swype isn't selling its product to individual users in the app store for $4.99, they're selling to manufacturers whose customers appreciate or demand this software out of the box. Facebook isn't selling its apps or website access because it's so much easier to just sell eyeballs to advertisers.
Games are the major exception, but they only account for so much.
In the physical world, it's by and large the intermediaries that sell to individual users. Most companies producing physical stuff — especially non-premium products that are supposed to sell at scale — don't open their own stores and often outsource issues like individual warranty handling to third parties.
I heavily suspect the iPhone B2C model is an anomaly that may soon be corrected.
Laziness/incompetence? (I don't know how many times I've downloaded an Android equivalent to an iOS app only to find re-purposed, screen captured iOS graphics with a non-native UI)
Device fragmentation, no IB, perception that Android users don't appreciate polished UI/design - take your pick.
Regardless of which excuse is chosen, the blame lies with the designer/developer/manager, not the OS.
EDIT: I'm speaking of custom interfaces rather than stock OS controls and views. Those elements are obviously controlled by the OS.
* For Android - https://market.android.com/details?id=com.wunderkinder.wunde...
* For iOS - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wunderlist-task-manager/id406...
Btw, I am interested if you know of other good multiplatform apps (not games) built using third-party middleware.
The Official Major League soccer app, MatchDay 2011, is quite gorgeous on both iOS and Android.
As a developer for both platforms, they each have their positives and negatives.
iOS feels like you're plugging together some pretty good looking (default) stuff and then layering on polish.
Android feels as though you're building from scratch... more like web development, where you need to create most/all of your assets from scratch.
Apple just sets a higher bar, both because of Apple's own apps and the approval process, and developers code to the users' expectations.
Plus, with the nice looking built-in UI widgets and Interface Builder, it actually takes some effort to make an app look bad.
I'm not seeing the same level of detail or commitment from Google or its partners at this time. It is much easier to copy off of a good design than to create a new one from scratch
Maybe Android users have a lower tolerance for crappy UIs? I ask not trying to pick a fight or start a flamewar, but out of genuine curiosity.
If iOS users are more apt to pay for applications, I suspect for the most part that they have little to no tolerance for substandard UX.
So if it is free no one really cares, but if you are paying for something you now have a vested interest in the product.
As I understand, the Nexus is the one Android is putting forward as an example, it is the highest quality of all phones. The whole of the current generation of iOS devices are the same, perfected examples of the hardware and software working together.
There are probably Android phones of better hardware than an iPhone, but do you know any apps that demand these phones, that are too slow on anything with a slower processor?
And it wouldn't be new for the industry. I had a buddy at Midway Chicago for many years, where they used to do many of their sports games on XBox and outsource the PS3/Wii ports.
The Android app is just garbage. It's basically just a watch list with links out to their mobile site. The end.
If you get invited to a geek party, remembering to shave alone would put you above the 90th percentile.
With enough time and assets you can build pretty amazing UIs on Android. Everything is there for you to create custom components and override styles.