Hacker News Reader

Comment by avolcano | Hacker News Reader

> But if you build an app on Android that’s on par with the design quality you’re used to on iOS, your users will love you. The press will love you. Gizmodo will feature your app just so they’ll have a nice header image for their “Android Apps of the Week” post.

That's nice, but will it translate into sales? Probably not, given the horror stories of Android piracy that seem to come out every few weeks (particularly in the gaming market).

Of course, many startups profit in hype instead of dollars, so maybe that's irrelevant.

View on HN

In the real world, those "horror stories" don't make it out of HN and tech blogs. Android is now the biggest platform out there, time to get back to earth. I've been on Android for a year now and know many noobs who are too, never had a virus, most people don't install much apps anyway and they usually only install the most famous ones when they do.

But the point of the article is that android is a better place for startups to develop apps (than iOS, specifically). The existence of 'noobs' who 'don't install much apps anyway' doesn't sound like it makes Android an attractive place for startups.

Android piracy isn't a horror story for users (unless they download a pirated app that's been injected with an address-book upload trojan, which is not unheard of). It IS a horror story for a startup trying to make money on Android, which is why it gets deserved traction in tech blogs and HN. And which is why the original article is flawed in the way the OP indicated.

I didn't make myself clear, most people on both platforms are noobs that don't install much apps (iphone and android) or only the most famous ones. Most noobs I know used to be iphone users too. Remember, in the real world, most people are noobs. As for apps stealing your address book, that happened on iOS too and no one cares but HNers and some tech blogs. Get over it.

Of course, the other stat is that almost all that piracy comes from China, which doesn't have the Play Store so people there can't buy your apps anyway.

Go with Android because that's where all the users are!

Piracy? Meh, all those users are in developing countries and won't buy your app anyway!

Users in China don't have access to the Play Store and aren't even counted among the activations that Google reports. The reason that there is more piracy in China is because of no access to the Play Store.

And, additionally, Chinese pirate iOS apps just as much as they pirate Android apps.

Android Apss are easier to deploy, but becuase of that, you get bad code - or WORSE - viruses! There are several Andoid apps that are Malware - there is not one in Apple App store.

So you're saying that Android should make it more difficult to deploy to decrease malware and bad code? Come on, stop drinking the kool aid.

Trick is to find a balance in the process so that author of an App is legally identifiable. This is to avoid episodes like "Fake Angry Bird App" and "Fake Mobile Banking App".

IMO, when I download ETrade App on my smartphone, it is good to know that someone checked that it was submitted by someone who is from ETrade really. If the process is rigorous for E*Trade, so be it. But as an end user I'd prefer it to be that way instead of making it _my_ responsible to verify before installing the app.

Note that this is a problem both stores share:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/08/how-app-store-grifters-...

From what I understand, absent a legal judgment Apple doesn't do much to police copycats, misleading names and the like.

Malware apps come and go in both platforms, and both platforms actively try to stop malware when it's reported.

Seriously. It's documented iOS has had malware: http://www.forbes.com/sites/adriankingsleyhughes/2012/07/06/...

There's a big difference between a platform with several hundred thousand known pieces of malware in the wild vs a platform with a tiny handful of what are mostly proof-of-concept apps.

Open vs closed & other religious wars aside, it's ridiculous to imply that both platforms carry the same risk to end users.

I didn't say that nor imply it. What I said was that both platforms do have documented cases of malware. The post I replied to made the obviously false claim that the iOS store has never had malware.

I'd like to point out that "in the wild" on android literally means "they're not in the play store", but rather downloaded from somewhere else.

The play store scans every submitted the apps for malware (in the last versions it also scans applications NOT installed through the play store).

I don't want to be pedantic, it's just that I know more about this platform and I would like to be corrected if I say something wrong about platforms that I'm not familiar with.

Wow! Bad karma for dissing Android! For the record - my family has every platform, including Andorid phone, kindle, and set top boxes. I personally had 2 malwares installed on my Galaxy that bricked it. Also there are way too many apps on Android that ask for information access they should not have - like my GPS location or contacts info for a game. Andoid needs a little higher bar to remove this crapware.

I highly doubt that malware could brick a phone.

If your phone was truly bricked, how did you identify that it was indeed "two malware" that bricked it?

I know of at least two security researchers that got malware into Apple's App Store.

Given the review process, the odds may be longer that a particular app is malware, but given the size of the store I think it is virtually certain there is still some undetected malware in it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com