OK, MG, I Take It Back | Hacker News Reader

OK, MG, I Take It Back

techcrunch.com

51 pointsplayhard13 comments

The thing I've found most refreshing about iOS dev is that I can finally get close to the hardware and really push it because I can make a lot of assumptions about my target devices. After 10 years of web development this feels like real programming again.

I've only dabbled with Android but the diversity of devices and versions seems to require the same lowest common denominator techniques I burned out on as a web programmer.

"Thus far Google’s attempts [to coerce Android carriers and manufacturers to prioritize OS upgrades] have been an ignominious failure. Well, “fail fast” has always been their motto, but I sure hope they get it right the next time. Me, every other Android app developer … and every other Android user. The latter group isn’t missing out on anything huge, yet; iOS isn’t that far ahead."

I'm not so sure, I think it'd be hard to argue that iOS 5 isn't far ahead of Cupcake (Android v1.5).

The iPhone 3GS was released 31 months a go. It can run the latest version of iOS and many iPhone 3GSes already do. In fact, 66% of all iPhones have the latest version of iOS installed [1].

Are there any Android phones from that time that have the latest version, Ice Cream Sandwich (v4.0), installed? How many even have Gingerbread (v2.3), which was released more than a year a go? In June of 2009, the most recent version of Android was Cupcake (v1.5); I'd wager that many Android phones have never been updated since.

[1] http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2012/01/more-than-66-of-u...

Is it valid to compare the "fragmented Android OS means writing code for old versions problem" to the browser fragmentation issues we've been dealing with on the web for so long? I can't really answer this as I haven't written any Android code.

If that is a valid comparison then perhaps building a library to abstract away the OS differences (like e.g. jQuery) is a big opportunity for someone. On the other hand maybe there are some features that are impossible to emulate on older platforms, or there are orthogonal features that can't be abstracted away.

One of the big differences is that if you do wish to use some crazy new HTML5 that is unsupported in most browsers for a niche app or demo, you can ask your users to update their browsers and they can do so for free. Unfortunately most android device owners are locked in by device manufacturers.

It's already happening - for example, as mentioned in [0], there are several apps / services which provide abstracted flashlight functionality across phones.

The comparison is quite valid, in my opinion - in much the same way that modern web browsers exist which have fixed many of the irritating API issues and abstraction mistakes of their predecessors, new Android versions provide corrected abstractions and a cleaner API but are rarely available.

[0]: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=9213433&p...

I wish MG would get educated on what he is talking about..

MAcOSx application developers also face fragmentation so do BB app developers WM developers, etc.

The iPhone 3G is stuck on iOS 4.3, which is last year's OS. The iPhone 3GS runs the latest iOS. If you target iOS 4 as the lowest common denominator, you will reach everyone but the iPhone 1 buyers, which was discontinued July 11, 2008. I guess there might be a few in the wild, but good luck getting the battery changed.

Targeting iOS 5 may be less wise. But even then, you will only be missing the customers who bought the cheaper 3G instead of the 3GS (about 2 and 1/2 years ago), or customers with 3 year old phones. Or people who haven't upgraded their OS, which will probably be more significant.

With Android, you can target 2.2 (SDK released 20 May 2010), 2.3 (SDK released 6 December 2010), or 3.0 (SDK released 22 February 2011). And you won't find many customers with an early 2010 phone who've been able to update to 2.3, and few with a late 2010 phone who've updated to 3.0, the 2011 OS. Seriously, WTF?

We might look back at this as time when Google made advances in the OS, but not a time when developers reached a large market. Kind of like the iPhone - iPhone 3G transition. Remember the hacks and jailbreaks then?

I don't think anyone is arguing there are mobile OSes that have zero fragmentation, unless there has only been one release. It's about the degree of fragmentation.

Makers of iOS apps can safely develop for iOS 4.2, since more than 97% of iOS devices have at least that version installed [1]. IOS 4.2 is little over a year old. Can a full time Android app maker afford to solely develop for Android 2.3 (which is also a year old)?

[1] http://www.marco.org/2011/11/30/more-ios-device-and-os-versi...

If you were developing an app today, you'd probably want to target 2.2 as a baseline profile. That covers 90+% of the devices out there, and it excludes some of the first and second generation devices that are going to be the real pain to develop for. In six months to a year, 2.1 will be off the radar for developers:

http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-ve...

So your answer to my question is 'no'.

Android 2.1 came out on January 12, 2010 (2 years). Android 2.2 came out on May 20, 2010 (20 months).

The OS version is one thing, but screen size is a real PITA. As well as orientation and the presence of a real keyboard ( or not). iOS is uniform in that space (just iPhone/iPod and iPad). To me that is the real issue, not the OS version.

Are you speaking as a developer? Personally, I agree with the OP that android's tools for dealing with this are really pretty decent and flexible. It's definitely something that I bear in mind when designing an app, but the range of screen sizes has never really made development more difficult.

If you want to make an app for both iOS and Windows Phone, you need to write two different applications, which are not compatible with another. Both iOS 5 and Windows Phone 7 have completely different APIs. If you add a new feature to one of the applications, it is not available on the other system. For every new operating system, you need to split your work. And your customers get an inconsistent and incompatible experience of your app across the different versions.

This is fragmentation.

From the ~100 different mobile operating systems that are in use today, maybe 95 can be targeted by a single code base, because they are all compatible with a common platform: Android 2.1 Eclair.

You still have to consider the many different hardware configurations. But most of the work of porting your application from one system to another is gone.

iOS and Windows Phone are complete end user operating systems, which are both made for a very specific hardware configuration and user experience. Android is a cross platform foundation that you can use to build those kinds of operating systems on.

Is there a common application platform for both iOS and Windows Phone, and how often is it updated?

The answer is: Yes, the web is such a platform. And it usually takes many years until an update is universally installed on all systems.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com