Comment by flyosity | Hacker News Reader

Comment by flyosity | Hacker News Reader

I think it's the standard that is set by the original creator of the UI widgets available on the platform, in this case, Apple vs. Google.

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.

That doesn't excuse the apps that actually write an entire UI from scratch. As I mentioned before, the CNBC app is all custom UI, beautiful and mostly entirely self-contained. However, the android version is a POS thats essentially just a mobile webpage.

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.

both apps are as hideously busy as their TV broadcasts

Also know as Angry Fruit Salad: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wiktionary/en/wiki/angry_fruit_...

Actually, there are quite a lot of standard UIKit objects used in the iPhone version, so it definitely isn't written from scratch. Granted, it doesn't explain why the Android version makes such a poor showing, since I'm pretty sure Android has equivalents for a lot of those elements.

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.

> Built in OS UI is not a factor here. I suspect budget isn't either.

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.

The iphone has been a viable platform for much longer. For any given company their Android offering will most likely be more immature

iOS provides more than just UI widgets. There's a lot more stuff given to developers on iOS vs Android. So if you 3mo to develop app on each platform the month you spend on Android recreating the libs Apple provides is spent making the iOS version "nicer".

Could you elaborate? I'm getting into Android development, and I'm wondering what I'm missing that's in iOS.

I think it may be worth mentioning the history of the technologies and companies behind them. Apple has always been more focused on the aesthetics of their products compared to competitors. Their OS and other software products have always been "prettier" than the offerings of MS and the linux community. In contrast, linux has a history of minimalist UI design, disregarding aesthetics for functionality. Developers that work on the new products like iPhone and Android tend to come from the old school and bring they're relative biases and habits with them to this new arena. I think as the android platforms mature, we will see a blurring of the aesthetic lines between the two products much as we have seen in the mac/windows/linux world with OS X, Windows 7, and Ubuntu.

It's important to note that minimalist != disregarding aesthetics for functionality. Minimalism is an aesthetic. I would argue that Apple's designs set the industry standard for minimalism.

yes, you are correct. I misused the minimalism analogy. the command line was the minimalist champion, and in my opinion, linux still holds that crown, despite apple's influence on minimalist implementations of windowing systems and UI.

Android has more market share than iOS, which would seem to suggest it's moved far beyond the "technical, geeky" crowd.

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.

That's a fairly optimistic view.

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.

I'm not sure they're disappointed, per se. The non-nerds I know who bought Android phones are generally pretty pleased to be able to make calls and use the web a bit.

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. A lot of people are coming to Android as a step up from feature phones. In fact a lot of Android phones ship without any way to install third party apps and act as essentially glorified feature phones. I'd love to see the statistics of Android phones sold with the Android store versus iOS device sales to get a better idea of where the two platforms stand in relation to each other.

A friend of mine bought a HTC Desire Z (of which the G2 is a variant) but while it is supposed to be in the powerhouse department (at the opposite end of the spectrum of a Galaxy Spica) its UI feels jerky, laggy and generally unwilling to respond to some user actions. My friend, despite being on the geeky side, seems not to notice it and because he seems to enjoy the phone I'm reluctant to make him notice and ruin its experience. Certainly this has to come from the fact he comes from a feature phone, so that phone is definitely an improvement.

I don't disagree with your observations about a pre-Gingerbread device, however it is remarkable how much 2.3 has improved. It is very competitive with the iPhone now from a spit and polish perspective, even on older hardware. So imagine the shine on a device like an upcoming Galaxy S II.

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 don't think it's even slightly true that "a lot of Android phones ship without a way to install third party apps".

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?

Ah yes. First it was shinier. Then it was more apps. Then it was more users. Now it's more paying users, rapidly eroding, and "lousy app selection." Chances of the huge backlash sure are looking better than ever.

My take is that most purchasers of Android phones are probably quite disappointed with the experience.

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 far from a fanboy... I got an Evo 4G and was so appalled by the battery life -- clearly nobody in their right mind would ship the product knowing how poor the battery life is -- that I did a double take and sold the 4G and bought an iPhone 4.

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.

Fair enough. I also had an Evo and the battery life wasn't great, but I didn't take that as an indictment of the entire Android ecosystem. (My Nexus S can last for 3 days with moderate use). I ended up giving it to a nontechnical friend, whose immediate reactions were that the screen is gorgeous, and that Swype and the universal text-to-speech are great.

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.

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

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.

Or perhaps these companies are seeing more purchases/revenue from iOS users, meaning that investing more time and money into an iOS version is a better ROI than putting the same investment into an Android version.

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.

Google, of all entities, has proven you don't need to charge for services to be profitable.

If you're not charging, you still need customers installing and using your app. Note, I said: "Or perhaps these companies are seeing more purchases/revenue..."

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.

The key here is to look at total revenue, rather than revenue/customer. The incremental costs of serving an additional customer are negligible, while development costs are (relatively) fixed. Thus the relative adoption rates of Android vs iOS customers becomes decreasingly important as the Android user base continues to grow.

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.

I agree, total revenue is key. In fact, that's my entire thesis: the disparity between current iOS and Android apps may be explained by the possible disparity in revenue between the two platforms.

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.

"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."

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.

Android has more market share than iOS, which would seem to suggest it's moved far beyond the "technical, geeky" crowd.

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.

Does your link realise that their first couple of graphs are for the "phone" market, not the "smartphone" market?

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.

Yes, his link (me) realizes that. The point of the graphs is that Apple is the only manufacturer growing significantly relative to the market, so to call them dead in water is ridiculous.

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.

Apple's not been growing relative to the US smartphone market though. It's been flat for a year (while Android has taken share rapidly) which, despite the ominous overtones, is what "dead in the water" means, a ship without wind not going anywhere (sales still need to rise about 60% to keep up with market growth so the analogy isn't perfect, but they rarely are).

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.

Yes, you're right. My preceding comment ignores the shift from dumb to smartphones.

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.

I call BS. My neighbor is a "normal" non-geek who has an android phone and even he notices the difference in app quality and bitches about it all the time (his wife has an iPhone). Just because he isn't "trendy" doesn't mean he doesn't know what quality is. Its his work phone, when his contract is up, he's already decided he's going to lobby for an iPhone and the apps are a huge reason why.

I have a work iPhone, a personal iPad and I used to have a relatively dumb personal phone. I "upgraded" the personal phone to a low end Android phone (a Samsung Galaxy Europa) and I've been really disappointed with it.

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.

It would be most interesting to see what percentage of Android phones sold are these sorts of super-cheap devices (in this country, a Galaxy Europa is about 80 euro on pre-paid; they won't even sell it to you on contract. By contrast, a Galaxy S is about 550 on prepaid or 150 on contract), versus the high-end devices which we hear so much more about.

Most of my co-workers seem to be moving from iPhones to Android phones. I get the "Nexus S on AT&T" update from one of them every day... he can't wait to ditch his iPhone for a Nexus S.

Of course, we're all scientists, engineers, programmers who recently took a course in Android programming, so my experience probably isn't standard :)

I've never really understood the Windows/Mac analogy here. I think the main reason many people end up using Windows over OSX, or any other OS, has always been the availability of software. People use Windows because there is a lot of really good software that just isn't available on other platforms. Granted this is slowly becoming less of an issue now that OSX is gaining some ground, but it is still an issue for a lot of people.

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.

Do you really think that? I used to be a Windows user, then switched to Mac by way of Linux a few years ago. Now I have to use Windows at work and I have a really hard time finding good Windows programs besides Office.

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!

By citing the parent comment and modifying the emphasized part I can correct it:

"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.

Yes, it's absolutely still true, although certainly to a lesser degree than a few years ago. The obvious easy example is games. The number of AAA games available on OSX is still tiny compared to what's available on Windows.

You have to go back further in time for the analogy to make sense. Which platform was Powerpoint originally written for? Seems crazy that it was written for the Mac now that it's so associated with Windows and Microsoft. Even the fact that Adobe Photoshop was a Mac program first seems a bit unlikely as Adobe has been treating the Mac as a second class citizen for a while.

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.

>Android has more market share than iOS

Is this even true? There are more adroid devices than iOS devices (iPhone, iPod, iPad)?

As of Q4 2010 the global sales were equal (10 million iPod Touches and 7 Million iPads and 16 million iPhone vs. 33 million Android phones). The Android sales were growing faster up to this crossover point, but while that means they'll have higher sales in the future, it also means that Apple currently have a higher installed base, which should last a few more months.

"Android has more market share than iOS"

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.

I mostly agree with you. The exception is the last paragraph.

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.

In regards to the last paragraph, I agree, I think that you're more likely to see bad reviews for 'app is ugly' on the IOS app store than you are on Android. If the users really want applications to look good they need to negatively review poorly polished applications. Most of the time if the app functions correctly, reviews will be positive.

"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. "

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.

Design is not only about aesthetics. It's as much about how it works.

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.

It depends what you're designing for. If you're designing for more clicks, more ad glances, cross-promoting your services, you can say that Google's stuff is well designed and that it works - because these are the metrics that they use to evaluate their design.

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.

I am not sure what you are getting at here.

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.

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