On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 8:31 PM, Christopher Van Kirk < [email protected]> wrote:
> Making software is a business. An investment. To reap maximum rewards on > that investment the product has to have as much reach as possible, meaning > the OP is absolutely on point about OS upgrades. Who is going to spend 10k, > 100k, 1m, etc, developing an app whose target market is less than 1% of > active installs? 4.0 won't be an attractive target for developers until it > commands at least 80% of the installed market, which will likely take at > least a year to occur, perhaps longer. > How different is this from a new major version of Windows coming out? It seems like at least a year until they start to get significant traction. Windows does have an advantage in that user can buy a copy of the newer OS and install it if some app they want needs it... but as an app developer, requiring a newer version of the OS than the user has is probably not likely to get most of those potential users to buy and install an upgrade to their entire OS. > Comparing handset differences with browser difference is just absurd. How > many browser versions are there? Five maybe six? An average Android app has > to deal with over 600 different devices today. That's a difference of 100x. > This number is also growing at an exponential rate, so even if you can > manage to test on all of those devices, in three months you'll probably > have to do the same number again. > You are significantly exaggerating about 600 different devices... if you are going to say that, you could just as well say there are hundreds if not thousands of different PCs running windows... not to mention all those different graphics cards and drivers and what-not... crazy! Yes it is true that there is some more variation between devices because of the ability of manufacturers to do customizations... but for the most part this doesn't impact apps (see below), and for those situation when it does you are looking at 3 or 4 major manufacturers with their own customizations, not 600. > What you're apparently not appreciating is that unlike the PC/Mac world, > the Android world lacks strong compatibility standards and more > importantly, conformance testing. > Really? http://source.android.com/compatibility/index.html Standards: http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/source.android.com/en/us/compatibility/4.0/android-4.0-cdd.pdf Conformance tests: http://source.android.com/compatibility/cts-intro.html > As a consequence, devices tend to have niggling and chronic differences > that in aggregate make for an inconsistent and unstable feel for the > platform. > If there are chronic differences, please file bugs with us to have these covered in the CTS tests. Pretty much any time a compatibility issue is found that isn't caught by CTS, a test for it is added. Now that Gerrit is back, you can even go and write and contribute your own tests right to CTS to make sure none of the manufacturers can again cause whatever problem you are having. > You really have to have a very large operation or have a very unambitious > app to make an app with long reach in the Android world. > I think there is plenty of evidence that this is not true. Of course you can always wiggle around what "unambitious" means, but I suspect you will quickly get to the point of it meaning "not doing things that go against the way one should approach writing an Android app". > By contrast, the Apple approach is that one size fits all. From a small or > independent developers perspective this really is preferable, because you > know if you test it and it works on one device it's going to work on all of > them, and there are millions of them out there. > This is fine, but it only works for someone who is tightly controlling the entire hardware and software stack and the variety of types of hardware that people can buy. Personally I think ultimately that approach is a niche -- I don't see one company being able to be produce the majority of all of the phones (not to mention tablets and whatever else) that the entire world is using. > Don't get me wrong. I'm not an Apple fan. But having spent considerable > time fighting with device peculiarities in the Android ecosystem instead of > adding features to my app, I find that I long for the simplicity that the > Apple ecosystem guarantees. > So what kinds of issues specifically have you had? -- Dianne Hackborn Android framework engineer [email protected] Note: please don't send private questions to me, as I don't have time to provide private support, and so won't reply to such e-mails. All such questions should be posted on public forums, where I and others can see and answer them. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
