Why I'm Not Supporting OS X

Android is fragmented, not just because Android devices have different screen sizes and resolutions, but also because they have different input methods as well (some are fully multi-touch, some have back/home button, some have QWERTY keyboard, some have stylus, ...) AND are usually a couple versions behind (just 1.2% of Android devices run 5-month-old 4.0, compared to about 60% of iOS devices that run 4-month-old 5.0[1]). I guess a huge portion of OS X users are on Lion or Snow Leopard (if I had to throw a number out of my hat I'd say 45% on SL and 35% on Lion; but the important thing is that every new Mac sold in the past 6 months came with Lion, not Android 3.2!).

And back to the screen size fragmentation point he's trying to make, I think it's really not as severe on desktop as it is on mobile devices - if you fine-tune a FULL SCREEN mobile app for a 4.1-inch display, it wouldn't fit well in a 4.6- or 3.5-inch display, and will look like garbage. But if you fine-tune an app for an 11" MacBook Air display, it's still reasonably tolerable on a 13" MBP.

[1] http://www.macrumors.com/2012/03/23/developer-sees-quick-ado...

I think the point he is trying to make -- that Android fragmentation is not that big of a deal -- is not supported by his sarcasm. You can, as a normal user, upgrade your laptop/iMac/Mac Mini to the latest supported version of OS X. For many Android users upgrading to ICS is simply not an option. (At least without rooting the phone, something most people are loathe to do.)

Personally I feel humor falls flat when it misrepresents the problem.

I chuckled when the point dawned on me, albeit a bit later than it should have. But the comparison breaks down when you consider the different ways Desktop OSes and Mobile OSes handle the relationship between display resolution and application resolution.

That is to say: we have come to expect (or have been required to accept?) that mobile applications operate on a full-screen basis only. This is logical for tiny screens, but causes problems when the definition of 'space' differs in the phrase "Use ALL the space!" This is not the case for desktops.

In Desktoplandia, we operate in a windowed (or tiling) environment that allows application resolution to be less-than-or-equal-to the display resolution. Some applications may choose to require a full-screen approach, but that is their choice. Other applications may actually place a maximum size on a given window, or not allow resizing at all! Hopefully the developers chose to limit their app for a good reason, but that flexibility is open to them. And while obviously a "maxes out at 800x600" application might be under-utilizing a 1920x1080 monitor, the environment is one wherein we have come to accept that this will happen from time to time. Furthermore, when it does happen, it's not always a loss in the usefulness or experience provided by the application.

So while the post succeeds at lampooning the dismay of mobile developers for a moment, I don't feel it fully captures the difficulty in being forced into an ever-changing, forced-upon-you full screen mode in an environment where people are less accepting of a "Well my app just happens to run smaller on your huge screen" approach.

I found this quite funny. I actually hear similar arguments from iOS developers quiet frequently with regard to Android. They've gotten lazy and think that designing flexible layouts that work on multiple screen resolutions is a challenge that they shouldn't have to solve.

Don't get me wrong fragmentation of versions & hardware is making some tasks difficult for Android devs but I feel like some devs are regressing in their mentality towards software challenges thanks to iOS.

A windowing system does wonders to unify different screen sizes.

Try making an application that runs equally well in full screen on an 11" MBA and a 27" iMac. The fact that windows can be roughly the same size on both machines gives you some common ground.

The question is how many people will pay for it.