I always forget about enterprise until Kevin Hawkins from Salesforce brings up some enterprise-y issues. Which reminds me of a conversation I had with a Cordova dev/shop that is still using BB 5.0 Cordova for banking apps in Nigeria (their platform is used by a majority of banks there). Because thats what most people can afford/use there. Blew my mind a little bit.
On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 12:58 PM, Ken Wallis <kwal...@blackberry.com> wrote: > I completely understand this argument, but there is one angle that makes > this very murky, and I think talks mostly to Marcel's argument: Enterprise. > > I deal with this everyday, trying to get any sort of metric around > Enterprise apps. It is almost impossible. But the anecdotal evidence from > our enterprise support teams is that there are a LOT of enterprise apps, a > LOT of which are using HTML5, there is huge interest in Cordova/PhoneGap, > and these are apps that you are really never going to know about. > > If the only thing we look at is the public app stores, then we are really > only focusing the Cordova effort on Consumers and consumer apps. > Enterprise is a different beast, but I think should be considered a very > important beast for this community. > > > -- > > Ken Wallis > > Product Manager – WebWorks > > BlackBerry > > 289-261-4369 > > ________________________________________ > From: Joe Bowser [bows...@gmail.com] > Sent: Friday, May 31, 2013 12:14 PM > To: dev > Subject: Re: Widening the window (was: The Deprecation of Froyo) > > On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 2:43 PM, Marcel Kinard <cmarc...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Starting off, specifically, I'm asking if we can keep Android 2.2 in > Cordova head. For how long? Until the OS usage in these markets drops into > the "doesn't matter" threshold. I suspect that will not be just a few > months. And does the definition of "keep" mean "actively support" or "just > avoid breaking it"? I'm open to suggestions. If I'm the only person asking > for this, I understand I need to have some skin in the game. > > > > No. > > In fact, I'll say hell no. We base our deprecation of Android > platforms on the good old Android Pie Chart found at > https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html. The pie > chart shows which people actually download applications on the Play > Store. I don't care about Android 2.2 devices that don't connect to > the store because they don't connect to the store and Cordova isn't > distributed to these people. These people don't matter because they > don't use apps, whether it be Cordova or a native Android application. > Supporting users who will never use apps is insane! > > Now, the Chinese market was problematic until recently, because Play > was blocked until a month or so ago. That being said, I think the > Android Pie Chart is a very solid way to tell whether the version > matters or not because these are the people who download apps. In > fact, if I was an application developer, I'd want to know about the > people who actually buy apps and in-app items, and what they run, and > I wouldn't support any of the freeloaders. That's where the group of > android developers who tweet about minApiLevel=14 come from. > > If we don't use the Android Pie Chart to determine what to support, > what do we use? Stories from the guy who hasn't upgraded their phone > in years? The fact is that the store is the only real way that we can > have any metrics on people who actually use apps, including people who > use Cordova apps. > > Finally, one of the big problems with supporting old versions for so > long is maintaining old devices. Devices eventually break. When you > install and uninstall something on a phone enough times, things get > weird, and even when you factory reset the device, things tend to not > work the same after three years of testing. We have one Android 2.1 > device and one Android 2.2 device. They tend to not work on the > device wall for some weird reason, and it's time consuming to run > mobile-spec on them such that it's not a worthwhile use of time to > actually make sure that we don't break Android 2.1 and 2.2 in the real > world. When is the last time anyone else who works on Android tested > on Froyo? Does anyone remember the last time they tested Eclair when > we claimed to support that? The emulator doesn't count! > > So, no, I see zero value in extending our deprecation window larger > than it currently is. We should support users who actually use apps, > not people who don't. > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > This transmission (including any attachments) may contain confidential > information, privileged material (including material protected by the > solicitor-client or other applicable privileges), or constitute non-public > information. Any use of this information by anyone other than the intended > recipient is prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, > please immediately reply to the sender and delete this information from > your system. Use, dissemination, distribution, or reproduction of this > transmission by unintended recipients is not authorized and may be unlawful. >
