I/O Thoughts
rustyshelf.org
rustyshelf.org
While they may just be titles, my experience has been consistent with their titles. Apple representatives you see once a year at WWDC, while Google representatives you see at Google I/O and also at a number of Google-hosted events year-round, including the regular videos they put out (and the "office-hours" type Hangouts they have so that you can actually talk to them and get your problems resolved) - just look at all of the events they have scheduled on the Google Developer Events page[0] or all of the videos they have on their YouTube channel[1]. I've also seen a lot of them give talks at tech conferences, while Apple employees are rarely seen at conferences. And you can see that Google's Developer Advocates really do talk directly to the actual teams directly and file bugs against them when necessary on behalf of developers everywhere. It's a system that has worked pretty well in my experience.
I will also agree that Google's Developer Advocates don't care too much about what platform you're using and just want to help you. I've been to a number of Google-run technical workshops and codelabs, and the people there are willing to help you with whatever problems you run into, no matter what it is.
Developer advocates are focused on helping address developers' problems. Developer evangelists are focused on increasing product use and adoption.
That said, the responsibility of these positions mostly overlap. In my personal experience as a developer evangelist at Marketo, my day-to-day work has encompassed the function of both titles. My goal is to create a great developer experience [0] in order to drive platform adoption [1].
Anecdotally, I have noticed a shift towards the developer advocate title. At Facebook, Dropbox, and Twitter, the role is called this.
[0] http://murtza.org/creating-a-great-developer-experience/
That's a great way of looking at it. There is definitely some overlap, but I think it's nice to have the mindset that they are on the external developers' side rather than just the company's side. And it works well I think - by helping out those developers, they can work towards better products and platforms, and increase adoption at the same time. Everyone wins.
Then, as now, Apple believed in their mission with a fervor that suggested the nomenclature. See 1980s Guy Kawasaki, etc.
Note I'm not making some sort of Mac/Windows analogy because the whole communication space has changed radically. Just making the point that the title "evangelist" implies more of a marketing role.
But yes, I could write volumes about the ways Apple could improve developer relations, and a recurrent theme would be the one-way nature of most interactions. Even big developers have a tough time of it, sometimes.
The labs at WWDC are valuable. And the tech talk tours sound like an attempt (have not attended), but it's a long-standing, systemic problem that is probably insoluble without extraordinary effort.
On the other hand, Cocoa is beautiful, and it all works out well in the end.
In my mind it's mostly a matter of positioning. An "Evangelist" is there to sell me something. A "Developer Something" is there to listen to me bitch.
Speaking of Cocoa, from what I've heard about NeXT, it was a small company and the developers were one step away from the customers. Perhaps it is 'beautiful' because of a lot direct feedback.
Wow. That is shocking to me - is that typical of Apple? I know they're very much about having people their ecosystem, but I didn't realize that there was this kind of animosity towards people who stepped out of bounds.
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-20/jobs-regretted-not-...
Alienating developers, on the other hand, seems like a losing play. Publishing on Android doesn't mean you stop publishing on iOS, but giving them the cold shoulder might drive them to do so.
Users who switch to an Android phone aren't any more "lost" to Apple than developers who publish on Android. They often still have iPads, iPods and/or Macs. Some might still buy music and/or video from iTunes. And so on.
In both cases, Apple is choosing to risk losing X as well in order to increase their chances of holding onto Y. And since we see other companies making both choices, it isn't an obviously winning or losing play in either case.
I'm not a fanboy for either camp...but I also do want to feel like a vendor is actively trying to lock me in to their hardware forever.
Which will make me less likely to choose an iOS device next time I buy one.
She has since stop using the iPad I think largely because her initial interactions with it were so poor. This is actually hurting Apple's goals.
° I assume this means she entered her phone number as a contact address - but frankly the experience is so horrible that she's unwilling to talk about it.
Those friends don't talk about it publicly for fear of further retaliation, but given their experiences, what OP wrote doesn't surprise me in the least.
But what is surprising, especially given the prevalence of these anecdotes, is that OP wrote about it. I have the feeling he made the calculation that there isn't much left that Apple can do to them (other than kick them out of their app store, which would probably backfire spectacularly, of course).
Steve Jobs' ghost is going to be haunting these walls for a very long time (well, at least until the new campus comes).
Yes it is. We have a pretty successful app in the iTunes store and as a consequence, we have privileged access to the entire team, including engineers and executives who advise us how to word the description of our app and telling us all kinds of tricks to increase downloads.
A few months ago, we released an Android app and since then, we have fallen into a complete Apple black hole. The Apple people we used to exchange daily emails with are not even responding to us any more.
Apple is very, very serious about exclusivity.
And probably feeling very, very threatened too.
I'm not sure that I was in danger of developing iOS apps any time soon, but these kinds of tales make me want to run screaming.
Also as someone who has worked on some of the most popular apps there is always the problem of feature equality. Companies don't want to annoy their customers by only offering features on one platform. So they don't. In which case you end up with a lowest common denominator of features.
The two are not mutually exclusive.
What is out of the ordinary is this way of doing it. Simply not responding to emails any longer, without explaining why, is very unprofessional indeed.
"Nice app you have there. It would be a shame if you stopped getting support on it" is not.
The problem with this approach is that it only works if you're #1 with a comfortable lead. Apple is #2 and fast losing mind share, and this kind of policy is only going to accelerate that trend.
That sounds like bad business to me. You should nurture and support your best customers/clients. There are 1 million apps on the App Store. Apple just figured some of the others deserve their support. It's harsh but understandable.
I think the policy of only catering to shops that are 100% developing on the Apple platforms is a terrible strategic mistake, especially since they are now #2 in this market and fast losing market share.
Also, catering to exclusives doesn't guarantee that you only get great apps in your store. Actually, it guarantees nothing except for acrimony from developers and the feeling that Apple is a fickle partner that can slam the door on them at any time.
The best way to regain market share is not to accelerate insulation but to woo companies developing on Android back by convincing them that iOS is a superior platform to develop for. As it is, all they are doing is convincing more and more developers that in doubt, they should develop for Android first and iOS second.
Q2 2013: Apple +230%
Q3 2013: Apple +210%
Q4 2013: Apple +110%
Q1 2014: Apple +85%
Apple's definitely on top right now, but the gap is narrowing very, very quickly.
They are basically repeating the same mistakes Jobs made two decades ago which led to the almost bankruptcy of Apple. Granted, they have enough money in the bank to be safe from this, but this kind of behavior is simply accelerating the decay of their market share, and as a consequence of that, of their profits.
That sounds like hubris and arrogance to me. Are you so sure that won't be changing anytime soon?
"If I don't get what I want, I'm going to take my ball and go home" is the epitome of childish reaction.
The mobile ecosystem is not zero-sum. Publishing on Android doesn't diminish the app's benefit to the iOS ecosystem. If anything, it only benefits their ecosystem, since it will improve the app's popularity, and result in more downloads of that app on iOS, by iPhone owners who hear about it from their Android-using friends.
It's similar to Nintendo. They don't really benefit from having the next generic COD game on their platform. They benefit from having a game that makes the most innovative use of the touch screen control.
It's funny you say that. In many companies you can hear people saying "it's nothing personal, just business" (you also hear the same from movie villains, oh well).
At Apple, for as long as I remember, it's exactly the opposite: it's not just business, it's always personal.
If you hurt Apple, Apple will hurt you back.
You can think of Apple as a smart, powerful, spoiled prince/princess. If you have something the prince(ss) wants, they'll try to be friends with you and shower you with gifts. But if you go this path you better never end up on their bad side.
It may seem childish to some, but as far as game theory goes, this kind if behavior makes one's choices and outcomes very clear when you interact with Apple.
This behavior is not just childish, it's even damaging to the brand.
That they do this on scale (not just certain small teams) lets me believe that the persons who created this policy have some type of psychological issue.
They should definitely see a doctor, if they aren't already doing it.
Also serves as a reminder what we, both as devs and users, gave up when we put ourselves at the mercy of approximately 2.5 app store operators. There's no need to remind me what we gained, I'm aware. The question is rather if we can get a system that combines the best of both worlds.
We didn't experience a cold shoulder at all from Apple after putting out the app for other platforms. But then again, that was just us.
Can relate to this a little bit...A coworker who is completely in the Apple camp argued fiercely how consistent the iOS keyboard was when I mentioned to him that the Android one changes case to match the Caps lock setting.
My primary mobile device runs Android and it's always a shock to me that the iOS keyboard doesn't do this. Are they taking their skeuomorphism too literally?
And the iOS 7 shift key symbol stupidity should automatically lose him the argument.
Wow. Really? That a silly reason for an otherwise indefensible UI decision. I really wish the iOS keyboard changed case. Ever since iOS 7, I can't tell whether shift is on or off. Maybe I'm just an idiot, but sometimes I fumble with it a half dozen times before getting it right. It's worse than trying to plug in a USB cable.
The major flailing is the shift key. Right now it's white with a black arrow. That means the sentence started with an initial cap. At any other theme, say mid sentence, it's different again. Mid sentence it's a white arrow on darker gray.
So, in short: about to type cap? Black on White. Mid sentence? white on dark grey. Want to do all caps? Double tap it and get a new version.
I'm not sure how these semantics are different enough from iOS 6 to cause confusion but it does ALL THE TIME.
The same property that makes "BIG TEXT" more difficult to read than "small text" might make each individual character easier to read. I'm not sure that it does, I just don't think your wikipedia page discusses this at all.
This argument doesn't stand since the shift key itself changes when you press it (it switches from an empty arrow to a filled arrow), something a real keyboard obviously doesn't do.
There's just no practical nor logical reason for the iOS keyboard to act like that.
I am intrigued, what happened? Did they verbally insult him?
This was one of the big surprising take aways for me. The minute Pichai took over I had the feeling that Android's future was limited - they would keep investing in it for sure but it would be on a long term road map for convergence and eventual transition to ChromeOS. I expected to first see Chrome apps running as first class citizens on Android, then a new SDK for Android that was all about ChromeOS and then finally a deprecating of the Java SDK. It always felt to me like internally Google preferred ChromeOS and the web as a platform and Android was a sort of accidental success that they were just running with until they could somehow meld it into their pure vision of computing, as represented by ChromeOS.
So now I'm having to significantly revisit all that thinking, as if anything Google seems to be pushing Android everywhere and little was said about ChromeOS.
Anyone that had thrown their lot in with Chrome Apps or similar probably felt this year how Android devs did last year.
I really dislike how everyone thinks the too management can sweepingly do anything they want. It does not work like that.
Chrome is now a first-class citizen of Android; its tabs will now appear seperately in the multitasking menu. Android apps are coming to Chrome OS in windows.
If this is to be interpreted as a first step, I imagine that Chrome OS will eventually become yet another variation of Android. A variation focused on windows, and instead of bundled installed apps a greater focus on Chrome. But still with it all being Android underneath.
They were responsive the first time I contacted them (before buying) but ignored my emails after I had bought and found issues like the above.
If you aren't in a car then you can resolve most of those issues by pressing the right buttons in the app. However while driving you can't, hence it mattering a lot more.
It used to be exactly like that in Microsoft around 2010. Microsofties were extremely sensitive about non-WP devices other employees used. Hopefully things have changed there since then.
IMO, they need to stop whining and give users what they want, a cheaper phone. That could have stopped android years ago, instead they just sued and became indignant. As if that helps. You want to talk about a bubble. I fear the day when apple's revenue drops. I sort of want them to stop bitching and do something, because that day won't be pretty.
Benedict Evans has a very interesting take on why Google has this sentiment. Basically, it comes down to Apple being about hardware and considering the cloud dumb storage and Google being about cloud services and the hardware being dumb glass (not Google Glass, but hardware interfaces). It seems like Google as a company is in sync, all they want to do is get their cloud services on as many devices as possible because the real value of Google is in the cloud. I agree with Benedict's hypothesis and I can't wait to see how these two companies unfold over the next decade. They currently seem to have two different trajectories.
That said I'll probably be looking to do more non-iOS work as well in the near future, I need to expand my horizons again.
Additionally, I was truly surprised at the heavy focus on Android at the expense of nearly everything else. I think with Sundar in charge we're seeing a sea change at Google in terms of platform focus, and this is -- while a little confusing sometimes -- a good thing. It also means I/O is turning into truly a hardcore developer conference with a unified theme (or several big themes), rather than a sort of dog & pony show ("Hey, look at this shiny, useless crap we've been working on!") like in the past (Nexus Q anyone? Android @Home? Google TV?). There was no mention this year of anything besides Android platform products & services, except the expected general purpose dev platform stuff (Compute Engine, App Engine, etc). I was surprised at the lack of mention of anything enterprisey, nothing about Google+ or identity management, anything about ChromeOS (just a small plug in the keynote about schools adopting Chromebooks), or any of their X projects. I at least thought they'd have some robots there to ogle.
If the keynote was subpar this year, the 'box talks were a highlight. The speakers were almost universally awesome, the open fora allowed high quality engagement, and if one topic didn't interest, it was easy to stroll to the next whiteboard/screen and see if that one did. Jake Archibald's talk on browser quirks was my favorite.
http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/speed/script-loading/
Btw, I was fully expecting Android Wear to be a novelty I had no use for, but I very quickly came around and already find myself talking to my watch, James Bond style. I completely agree with this Ars post: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/android-wear-smartwat.... My wife & I have a "no phones at the dinner table" policy but even my kids have been telling me to "ask Google" for answers to questions. Having the knowledge graph so handy is awesome.
An example of problematic documentation is Volley, which is a brilliant and totally needed framework and documentation that exists for it is a 45 minute presentation and a handful of StackOverflow posts.
I guess I'm just coming at this with a WWDC mentality, where a presentation would be run only on a completely production-ready and documented framework, and perhaps I/O does things differently.
Our users and testers care about a great software experiences. So what matters most to us are stable, well designed and supported software platforms and ecosystems that let us deliver great experiences.
Its easier to make good tools when they need to work on 5% market share (Mac only)?
Google Tools are free. Apple tools start with you buying their $2000 machine.
Also, many people who use Google tools also have macbooks (e.g. all the Googlers I know), they have to use the tools with something.
Hrm... well, it can come with a monitor... for an extra thousand. Okay, scratch that, I'll get a cheap DisplayPort monitor... add a couple of hundred (or if I feel like splurging, get two). Oh, and a keyboard, another $50 (apple-branded, of course, because normal keyboards don't have apple keys). Mouse? Apple mouse at $50+? Maybe I'll go with a cheap logitech or something... 4GB memory standard? for a dev machine? OSX has trouble with that little memory. Up to 8GB for another hundred (or 16GB for three hundred). Spinning rust will do, but if you did want an SSD, throw on a couple hundred more.
The idea that mac minis are 'cheap development boxes' is nonsense. It's cheaper than a decent macbook pro, but it's not a cheap workstation.
On the off chance you don't have a mouse, a keyboard, or a display, you can get a decent mouse for around $5, a decent non-mechanical keyboard for $30, and a high-quality display for $150. All three of these will improve your productivity on your laptop if you're not traveling. If you don't have a laptop or a desktop...how are you developing for Android to begin with?
Well, this requirement wasn't in the original brief. And in any case, you're trading your own labour and domain knowledge to shave a few dollars off. The scrounging you've mentioned is only a little cheaper than what I've mentioned - my point is that it costs more to set up a mac mini for a developer (rather than a headless server) than the throwaway line presented. Even with your cheaper, more-effort-given-to-scrounging pricing, the monitor + HIDs alone add 1/3 to 1/4 the price, never mind the ram or ssd.
I bought a 27" iMac with a 2.7GHz Sandy Bridge i5 for $250 on Sunday. Try again.
I'm not an Apple partisan; my last gig was Android development. But the idea that there's this massive barrier to entry is a complete joke.
As for the Mac mini that you talked about, that's a far cry from the 27" iMac with the i5 that you originally described.
This hasn't been the case since XCode 4, which was released in 2010 and introduced a single-window for everything.
At least on OSX, I doubt anyone would dispute that XCode 4 in 2010 was miles ahead of Eclipse and early versions of the Android SDK, and that arguably holds to today, though less so with Android Studio.
> Overall they just seem more balanced, you can tell that what Apple is doing doesn’t keep them up at night.
Eh, I have found the opposite, whereas Android developers will be very hardcore, almost akin to .Net developers who only use bing. They will only use Android, and Google, and Open Source, and never pay for anything ever. Even apps. And beware if you have an iPhone.
Not all, and maybe I am sheltered from the Apple critics because I leave my Android phone and table at home. And it really depends who you meet.
I certainly see Apple as a very closed company compared to Google, but it looks like that is changing with the WWDC 3,000 API's announcement, really opening up the OS to developers. iOS devs can start to do cool things that Android devs have been doing for a while.
As for the Google anouncements, is TV any different than the last few years? And they still don't seem to have wearables right yet.