[Cialug] iPhone vs Android

[Josh More]

Matthew,

I bow to your greater experience, though I am curious as to why a lot
of my other friends who do appdev work say that IOS is a lot easier.

Is it a language thing?  I had gotten the impression that everything
on IOS was a lot more streamlined and that testing was a lot easier on
that platform.

-Josh

On Mon, Apr 13, 2015 at 10:18 AM, Matthew Nuzum <newz at bearfruit.org> wrote:
> Theron, I think your point is right, but how you got there is not right.
> iOS is, sadly, a very big moving target and I've never met a company that
> uses planned obsolescence as brutally as Apple does.
>
> Josh, I also disagree with your statements: iOS is far more difficult to
> develop for than Android, though with the very recent versions of Xcode,
> it's getting close.
>
> I think the C-level execs having iDevices is more likely to blame. My next
> best guess is that we have a severe shortage of Java developers around the
> area, so it could simply be a problem with the cost being too high.
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 13, 2015 at 9:44 AM, Theron Conrey <theron at conrey.org> wrote:
>
>> I'll call BS. Most app devs I know want to solve real problems AND make
>> coin.  Those people know that iOS is less of a moving target.  It moves,
>> just less than android.  It's treated as a stable base to make larger
>> revenue with a single build vs. android with multiple platforms.  There are
>> devs that just want to make coin with crap. The above also explains why
>> they write against iOS primarily as well.
>>
>> -theron
>>
>> > On Apr 13, 2015, at 9:00 AM, Josh More <jmore at starmind.org> wrote:
>> >
>> > App developers come in two flavours - those that want to solve real
>> > problems and those that use the easy tools to collect a paycheck. The
>> > latter have been targeted by Apple with a campaign focused on
>> > promoting graphic artists into "developers".
>> >
>> > So, in the former case, you have people who are highly skilled and
>> > expensive, creating apps that don't look very good and often fail
>> > based on the wide range of devices out there. In the latter, you get
>> > cheap apps that look great and work reliably (usually) on a class of
>> > device.
>> >
>> > At the business level, an Android solution requires investing a lot of
>> > cash up front to pay for the good devs AND investing in a support
>> > infrastructure since there's no way to test an app on all available
>> > devices so you have to deal with the constant "my four year old device
>> > won't run your app!" complaints. If you go with IOS, you pay once and
>> > get a piece of crap that works OK on most devices and your support
>> > staff is a single person whose job is saying "we don't support the
>> > iPhone4, you have to upgrade".
>> >
>> > All told, it's a good business decision, even if we don't like it.
>> >
>> > -Josh
>> >
>> >> On Sun, Apr 12, 2015 at 2:49 PM, Todd Walton <tdwalton at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >> It has long boggled my mind why it seems so common for some
>> organization to
>> >> produce a phone app for iPhone but not Android. Close to home, the
>> biggest
>> >> offender is the Des Moines Register. They made an app for iOS for
>> RAGBRAI,
>> >> but not for Android, and the same for a new "things to do in Des Moines"
>> >> app. They promised an Android version Real Soon Now, but we're still
>> >> waiting.
>> >>
>> >> What is so hard about making an app for Android? You'd think the least
>> they
>> >> could do is write the thing in HTML5 and show a mobile website on both
>> >> platforms.
>> >>
>> >> Android phones clearly outnumber iPhones in the U.S. and worldwide, and
>> >> it's not like Des Moines Register's audience (or the audience of any of
>> the
>> >> other apps I've seen do this) are iPhone heavy. Why would a company
>> limit
>> >> themselves by deliberately rolling out to a smaller audience and then
>> >> waiting years to go to Android? (Or never going, for some of them.)
>> >>
>> >> I thought it might be that iPhone is where the money is. But there's
>> info
>> >> on that here:
>> >>
>> >>
>> https://medium.com/its-an-app-world/march-2015-iphone-vs-android-monetization-capabilities-you-won-t-believe-who-won-7a02fde2dc2
>> >>
>> >> # of phones worldwide:
>> >> iPhone: 600,000,000
>> >> Android: 1,700,000,000
>> >>
>> >> Yearly Downloads:
>> >> iPhone: 22,000,000,000
>> >> Android: 51,000,000,000
>> >>
>> >> In App Purchase Revenue:
>> >> iPhone: $10,000,000,000
>> >> Android: $6,000,000,000
>> >>
>> >> In App Ad Impressions:
>> >> iPhone: 580,000,000,000
>> >> Android: 1,210,000,000,000
>> >>
>> >> Ad Revenue:
>> >> iPhone: $3,300,000,000
>> >> Android: $4,500,000,000
>> >>
>> >> That doesn't look like a clear case for iPhone being the money maker,
>> >> especially in the case of the Register, being driven by ads.
>> >>
>> >> Anyone have any insight? What's so special about iPhone that so many
>> people
>> >> choose to distribute there, and not on Android?
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Todd
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>
>
> --
> Matthew Nuzum
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>
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