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Comment by TrainedMonkey | Hacker News Reader

I think a subtle problem with the android fragmentation is that it is not going to get any better. As time goes on there will be more devices running more android versions.

While Google's cheap handset initiative embodied in Nexus 5 will ameliorate problem a bit by giving people incentive to upgrade, it is not nearly enough. I would like to see Google do more to address growing complexity of fragmentation.

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We manage fragmentation between computer systems since the dawn of computing.

I really don't get why some people make a huge fuss about it on Android.

I do not dispute that. I agree that it is a manageable situation. What I was pointing out is sheer scale of it. Given enough effort it is certainly possible to make any app to work on all android platforms. However, there are millions of apps in the play store and it is not possible to make them all to work on every device. I just think Google should be actively working to make that task easier on developers. For example getting cloud emulators or even physical devices available to developers for testing their apps against with automated framework.

How is that any different to make it work on the hardware configurations of all PCs ?

I agree that in general situations are quite similar, however there are few differences:

1. PC never had a singular point of access to nearly all available applications. Play store makes it easy to download/install or distribute a new application making it instantly available to large amount of people.

2. It is fairly easy following a tutorial to create a new mobile app. This combined with 1 makes it easy even for relatively inexperienced people to make apps that reach wide audience.

3. Rigidity of mobile environment. On PC if something goes wrong you have a chance to figure it out and correct a problem. This is much harder on mobile, often times only thing you could do is complain to the developer.

4. No POSIX. On PC if you need an app to work across a wide array of software and hardware configurations POSIX got your back. Granted, this is a weaker point because it would work only on a limited set of operating systems that are POSIX compatible.

5. You can install almost any app from play store on nearly any android device. You can't install mac os app on windows.

1. Magazines with tapes, floppies, CDs, DVDs

2. BASIC, Logo, Hypercard, ...

3. Fail to see the difference

4. POSIX only covers a tiny bit of OS portability and even POSIX leaves the little bit it covers with lots of vendor specific behaviors

5. You can install any Mac app on any Mac, any Amiga app on any Amiga, any PC app on any PC, ...

6. The 8-bit microcomputer madness. How many pieces of software were ported to half a dozen or more platforms?

It's not. Except Windows has 95% of the market and the Mac had 5% of the market. So even though it's easier and cheaper to support a Mac app, the market is so much smaller it's still not really worth it.

Compare to mobile where iOS market place was leading, it didn't make a lot of sense to spend more effort on the smaller market.

Now the Android market is about equal, you are still spending more effort to make the same money.

> Except Windows has 95% of the market and the Mac had 5% of the market.

Except you are forgetting, screen resolution, processor speed, graphics card, sound card, co-processor, printer type, scanner type, microphone, webcam, harddisk, network card, modem, ...

Way back in the day it was pretty common for people to swap out pieces of a system (not too much today except for gamers).

Your system needs a bigger screen? Get a bigger monitor and/or graphics card. Need a faster modem? Buy one. Need a camera? Add it.

Go upgrade the graphics chip in your Android 2.3 handset. Oh wait...

That doesn't have anything to do with the complaint about Android's fragmentation.

you're pointing out 'fragmentation' in the windows market because of all the varying hardware, and it seemed you were saying it was equivalent to the android world. it's not, because you generally could change hardware on a windows system, but not on an android device.

Quite the contrary.

I am pointing out that fragmentation in the COMPUTER HARDWARE and SOFTWARE is normal and exists since computers are among us. Windows market is a tiny spot of the COMPUTER HARDWARE and SOFTWARE around the world.

Any good developer learns to deal with it instead of writing posts whining about it.

Plus iOS which is oversold as not being fragmented has different set of API support depending on iOS/handset/tablet pair set.

But... it wasn't ('a tiny spot') at the time. And good developers didn't 'deal with it' so much as people simply upgraded their hardware - computer stores routinely upgraded people's modems, graphics cards, sound cards, monitors, etc. Of course, some software would run with lower quality hardware, or try to run without certain features, but people mostly upgraded components (or entire systems) to be able to run newer software. We do that today somewhat - buying new systems - but no one reasonably tries to upgrade the CPU in their android smartphone - they just get a new one.

We're either talking past each other or have a vastly different sense of the issue we're talking about (or both).

> We're either talking past each other or have a vastly different sense of the issue we're talking about (or both).

My point is that developers always had zero control over the hardware/software configuration of the systems being targeted, it has nothing to do with the ability to upgrade.

Lets say one is coding an application for Amigas. There are 500, 600, 1000, 1200, .... series.

There is zero control over which type of monitor/TV and external devices the respective users have attached to their systems.

There is no concept of device drivers as of today systems, most need to be provided by the application writers themselves.

Again, zero to do with upgrade capability rather with the diversity of the installed base.

Well, no, Android market share is not equal to iPhone. It's much, much more.

The problem is the hardware AND software targets for mobile devices is still growing and evolving rapidly.

Rapid, very different hardware variants- Screen size, cpu power, GPU power, storage mechanisms. Software: 3d Apis, third party Apis, if you want to take advantage of a new framework you may not be able to because of people either unwilling to, or not able to upgrade.

It's completely different from the PC world.

I think the main issue with fragmentation is dealing with 2.3 (as the article mentions). Now that that's going away it's getting much better very soon so I can't agree that "it is not going to get any better". The latest Android project I'm working on will only work for ICS and newer and I've had very few cross-platform issues (two minor issues that I can think of).

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