Pinterest for Android released
play.google.com
play.google.com
So much good could be done for the promotion of well designed apps, by making things like this openly available.
In a world where a Designer (with training) can fire up Interface Builder and skin an app without having the code and make it look pretty darn awesome - and where to skin an Android app is almost like torture for a designer - really - ask a designer, if you don't believe me.
In a world where there are at least a double-digit number high-quality open source implementations for image caching (as in load over network on demand, tiered cache - memory, disk) in the iOS world - and maybe 4-5 (AQuery, Novoda, Ignition - I remember off-hand) in the Android world - it's just a different community. There isn't a lot of sharing going on (but that has changed). I think it is a top-down thing - Apple loves its developers (I've been to a couple Apple events) - they want their developers to make awesome apps. Google - not so much - with the exception of Diane Hackborn and Romain Guy and a few others - there is no army of developer evangelists - just a SWAT team, at best. Google hides behind the curtain ("pay no attention to the man behind the curtain). Apple, for lack of a better term, has created a strong community (profits from the App Store help - and profits for making free apps for Fortune 500 companies - for the majority of those who don't make an App Store revenue living) and really, a tribe (in the Seth Godin sense).
However, there is hope. Jake Wharton, now working for Square, has done more to single-handedly advance the lowest-common-denominator for UI/UX in the Play marketplace at large with his ActionBarSherlock.
I'm just coming off a big Android project and it is indeed really painful, but as you said saints like Jake and ABS make it actually possible to make something that looks good on all devices.
I do have to say that with the combination of ABS and HoloEverywhere it isn't THAT hard to make a good looking Holo app across all devices anymore. There is a very steep learning curve, but once you have your project set up and learn the tricks of RelativeLayout etc, then it is mostly predictable.
But ya, nowhere near the amount of resources as iOS.. hope that changes.
To be fair, designing for Android isn't really about a single, static screen. Interfaces have to be responsive considering how many different kinds of devices and screens your app can display on. This is what makes the Android learning curve high, since how you make your interface is very intimately related to the code behind it in terms of organization. The ADT team is making good progress on improving the Eclipse interface editor, but Android design is still going to be easier with mockups done in other tools.
> In a world where there are at least a double-digit number high-quality open source implementations for image caching (as in load over network on demand, tiered cache - memory, disk) in the iOS world - and maybe 4-5 (AQuery, Novoda, Ignition - I remember off-hand) in the Android world - it's just a different community. There isn't a lot of sharing going on (but that has changed).
The main problem is that, in general, there is a huge skill difference between the average Android developer and the good Android developers. I think this is why frameworks are coming on slowly, as the best developers can easily get hired to do challenging work. Hopefully time will improve the third party frameworks situation.
> I think it is a top-down thing - Apple loves its developers (I've been to a couple Apple events) - they want their developers to make awesome apps. Google - not so much - with the exception of Diane Hackborn and Romain Guy and a few others - there is no army of developer evangelists - just a SWAT team, at best. Google hides behind the curtain ("pay no attention to the man behind the curtain). Apple, for lack of a better term, has created a strong community (profits from the App Store help - and profits for making free apps for Fortune 500 companies - for the majority of those who don't make an App Store revenue living) and really, a tribe (in the Seth Godin sense).
I don't really think this is true. The Android team is always pumping out content for improving apps and working within Android, both live on G+ and archived as posted to their youtube channel (www.youtube.com/user/androiddevelopers). There are many app good quality apps coming from indies and larger companies and there is a solid Android community. The main issue is the increased complexity of Android, including use of Java, makes it harder to get started, esp. for new developers.
> However, there is hope. Jake Wharton, now working for Square, has done more to single-handedly advance the lowest-common-denominator for UI/UX in the Play marketplace at large with his ActionBarSherlock.
ABS is a great library, but we still see people making low quality apps. Until other frameworks can reduce the most common cases for new developers, app quality will still be really variable.