Most of the hard work of promoting the Android platform to developers has already been done by Apple.
Originally, I wanted to spend my tax return on a Mac so I could partake in iPhone development. Given Apple's recent actions, I'm just going to get an Android phone, and use my current laptop loaded with Ubuntu to develop for it.
I could not agree more. Sent from my Nexus One that literally just arrived. My semi-new iPhone is on Craigslist, and I'm already working on an Android app.
I just wish there was a "main" android phone, or one that was a clear leader. So far, it's felt like "the" android phone to have is whatever is next in the pipeline.
I understand that the Nexus One is probably the nicest piece of hardware out there right now; but it's hard to decide to jump to it when it constantly sounds like there's going to be something even better just around the corner.
I guess my complaint is that I feel like the Android ecosystem is still too volatile to want to spend money on a phone.
Part of what icey may be talking about is development; the wide variety of Android hardware does make for a major pain point that doesn't exist in the Apple ecosystem (though with the iPad and the new resolution on the next iPhone, it might be getting there).
the wide variety of Android hardware does make for a major pain point
Right now the overwhelming majority of Android phones have 320x480 (iPhoney) resolution or 480x800 or 480x854 (Droid). That's just two densities and really only two sets of art assets to program for. iPhone will soon have two densities and iPad, which is really neither better nor worse. iPhone apps are easily targeted at a particular resolution with interface Builder while Android apps have a cumbersome and ugly system of trying to achieve resolution independent layout that most developers don't understand or use correctly. There's no saying what will happen to Interface Builder when it faces the challenges Android set itself with varied device standards.
But for now iPhone has a significant advantage in ease of development here.
On the plus side for Android now is that higher density resolution makes websites a pleasure unimaginable in my iPhone. On the minus side, I keep getting user requests to support their trackballs and other exotic hardware.
Yeah, this is mostly the case. If you look at what's out there right now you have some phones that run Android 2, some that are still on Android 1.6 out of the box, some that run the HTC modifications to Android, some that are on the standard Android interface. After that, you have to consider the processors and memory available in every device - will most phones have enough power to run application X? Will this look like crap in these various phones because the hardware sucks?
It just feels like a very fractured ecosystem. I hate developing for a platform that makes it feel like there are a lot of unknowns - how many test phones should I need to keep around if developing on Android? I know that it should be only 1, but is that really the case? How long will that remain the case for?
Maybe wishing for "the" canonical Android phone is the wrong approach; but it would be nice if Google came out with some hardware guidelines that said "You can at least expect to have these things be true on every Android device."
That's a valid sentiment. The problem is that freedom from such issues is very rare in general-purpose computing. Certainly on x86 it's always an issue (EDIT: except on very specialized OSes, I suppose), as it is on J2ME (and I'd guess Symbian). Dedicated game consoles are pretty much the only place I can think of where your application will always run on absolutely known hardware.
I agree, both as a user and as a programmer, that the mess with Android 1.6 sticking around for essentially political reasons needs to improve fast. Minimal specs are nice, although they will necessarily change as the time progresses, and you will have to make a cut-off yourself. Support only Android phones released in the past two years (as an example, obviously not a useful guideline right now) and you will know what your lowest common denominator is.
On the other hand, even Apple's halcyon days of single-device uniformity are coming to an end. You now have two resolutions in iPhone OS to deal with, and if rumours are true, you'll have a third one in June (though that one's less of an issue since doubling should work acceptably). OSes 3.2 and 4.0 force you to consider both hardware and software keyboards. The iPhone 3G has less RAM available to an app than the 3GS and the iPad. CPU speeds are different on every release and I believe graphics performance differs too. New hardware features have been introduced that you have to check for. Between June and November-ish, you'll have to support 3.2 for iPad and 4.0 for iPhone (and 3.0 for older iPhones, if you even want to).
Based on my experience with the iPhone OS, you don't really have to check for any of that unless you want to use that particular feature. For the vast majority of simpler apps, all of that is transparent. If CPU speed is an issue (games, mainly), it does help to have a pre-3GS around to serve as a baseline, but I think that the process is much less daunting than you try to make it seem in trying to play down the uncertainties of dealing with Android's fractured ecosystem.
Get a Nexus One unless you have a compelling reason not to (such as having to be on Verizon or needing a physical keyboard). None of the upcoming phones are significantly better, and being from Google the N1 is virtually guaranteed to get updates in a timely manner. Also since it's unlocked out of the box, it should retain decent resale value if you want to upgrade in the future.
I was frustrated by the same aspect of the Android ecosystem, until I had this minor revelation: it's not really about "the" phone, it's about the phone that works best for you. The nice thing about Android is that you can pick the carrier, form factor, and price point that work for you.
Want a keyboard and like Verizon? Get a Droid. Like Verizon but don't need a keyboard? Get an HTC Incredible later this month. Like the Nexus One but want the freedom of a SIM card? Use it on T-Mobile or AT&T. Want a cheaper phone with a keyboard? Get one of the new Motorola models that are coming out for just about every carrier.
You can think of it as confusing, or you can think of it as having options. Both are probably true :)
Has it really worked well in PCs? The average PC manufacturer is hardly rolling in money, unlike Apple. Nor is the average PC user likely to be too happy with their computer. Meanwhile in the Apple ecosystem both the normal user and the supplier seem to be rather happy. There is something to be said for tight integration of hardware and software in providing a good user experience.
(That said, personally I hate my MacBook Pro from work with the fire of a thousand suns, and have only used an iPhone for playing music on long plane trips since getting a Nexus 1.)
> Has it really worked well in PCs? The average PC manufacturer is hardly rolling in money, unlike Apple.
Assuming we are segmenting the Mac market from the PC market, it is much better to be in the PC market whether you are consumer or a producer. For manufacturers, it sucks to be in Apple's market if you are not Apple (PsyStar?). For consumers, they get a wider selection of products at lower price points, though they do not get the design cachet.
To make a belabored car analogy, would you rather be in the market for Italian supercars or that of the rest of the world? Both producers and consumers tend to choose the latter.
Most consumers would choose to be at the luxury end of almost every product. It's just not a choice for almost everyone.
As to producers, it isn't inherently better to be a luxury market or a general market -- it's highly dependent on your product, market, and competitors.
For consumers, they get a wider selection of products at lower price points, though they do not get the design cachet.
That's a kind way of saying that consumers have a very diverse pile of crap to choose from.
Some people are just rich and can buy whatever they want.
But other people buy fancy houses, fancy cars, fancy computers, fancy holidays, fancy clothes etc. by virtue of choosing what is important to them and spending less on everything else. You can't spend more than average on everything unless you have more than average money. On average, people don't.
For consumers, they get a wider selection of products at lower price points
Lower price points, but a Windows PC is cheaper than a Mac only if your time and frustration is worth nothing.
Actually, if you want a quality desktop (quality meaning zippy specs and at least a 27" 2500x1500 bright high quality monitor) you might find Apple cheaper.
Nobody else is really in Apple's market right now because selling high quality hardware and a great experience is impossible when you're wedded to Microsoft garbage. It's probably a worthwhile market, though, if you could get the millions necessary to start up.
Even though Apple was in trouble in the 90's, it was and is and has been since the 1970's the most profitable computer manufacturer in the world almost every year.
I think a lot of Apple's recent success comes from how nice their computers and products look. The iMac has one cord. Compare that to a Dell. Ugh. The PC market contains inexpensive computers that look cheap.
Motorola Droid probably is the clear leader when you consider it's sales. The Nexus One is basically the current generation Android reference platform, just like Dream (G1) and Ion (MyTouch). Note that the Incredible and Desire are basically variants of the N1 and aren't really anything that different.
Basically your choice comes down to a hardware keyboard (Motorola Droid) or better specs (Nexus + variants).
I wonder if there's a business opportunity here? What would it cost to tool up an Android app testing shop? A bunch of phones wouldn't be that expensive.
it's hard to decide to jump to it when it constantly sounds like there's going to be something even better just around the corner.
Welcome to the computer industry. That there's something better just around the corner hasn't stopped people who have wanted Apple products for the past 20 years from buying them, to the point where Apple even ends up giving late adopters refunds if they buy something that Apple drops the price on within some limited amount of time after they purchase it.
Not in Europe (or at least Scandinavia). Every Android phone I've seen in the wild is either an HTC (roughly 70-80%) or a Samsung (20-30%). I don't think I've ever seen anyone using a Motorola Android phone.
Ah! I figured out something from the technomacy blog post. The last part says:
Adapting the build process to Duby was surprisingly easy. You redeclare the compile task to call the Duby compiler instead of javac, tell it to output its bytecode in the right directory, and the rest of it just falls into place.
In a similar story, I have been ignoring the entire mobile phone app craze until now. Something about Google's message really resonates with me and I'm thinking of writing my first phone app for Android. Gonna go buy one soon and make apps!
You can probably just apt-get everything you need to get started with android dev, no?
You can grab the general-purpose development tools (jdk, Eclipse, etc.) with apt-get. After that, you'll need to download the Android SDK and follow the installation steps. Eclipse will pull the remaining libraries for you. (If you encounter any strange errors while installing the SDK through Eclipse, try downloading the full Eclipse from eclipse.org and using that instead.) It's very easy to set up a virtual phone in the emulator and test your apps on various versions of Android.
Overall, my experience with the Android toolchain on Ubuntu (as well as OS X) has been a positive one.
> "And even now (after we peaked at the No. 7 paid app), we still have no relationship with anyone there."
This, for me, is a real problem with the Apple model (the "hide the engineers" model, also followed by Oracle), we can not simply write an e-mail about a bug (Apple do have a closed bug tracker) or suggest a feature or even get motives about why some features do not exist in the iPhone (such as OpenVPN support), compare this with the extensive network of blogs that Google and Microsoft engineers have.
This is sad, you're always dealing with a cold company and not with people just like you that probably have some good motives for including or not a feature in a product, I wish to be alive in the day Apple becomes more open.
This is very smart on Google's part. What Android seems to lack is polished apps (at least on the scale of the iPhone), and wooing specific developers could go a long way to remedying that.
Apple managed to get quantity, and with that the quality that you can often expect from the top 5% given enough quantity.
Google's much more surgical approach makes sense in that they can't realistically compete in quantity of apps any time soon, and thus have to specifically seek out quality to compete with Apple.
I think you're partially right, but I think some of that quality is just because the platform puts UX as a top priority. I'm speaking very generally, of course, but there is a reason OSX apps have a reputation for looking very polished vs other platforms.
Reminds me of the "first-to-market advantage" that entrepreneurs talk about all the time. Apple took a huge, huge chunk of market and has had it since the iPhone came out. I think we'll see over the next year or two how well that works for them, and if developer sentiment is an early indicator, there could be some big changes in market share.
Be careful: what you see on HN can be a very bad indicator of the real situation. All that was kind of blown out of proportion. There was kind of poll on HN asking iPhone developers how they feel about 3.3.1 and most of those who do develop for iPhone said more or less along the lines "I don't care much". The biggest outcry was probably from those who never did nor were going to develop for iPhone. At least they found some justification for that now.
It's easy to get scared by rejection stores, but: App Store has close to 200 000 apps now. What are the real chances to get your app rejected?
I've been kind of curious how much 3.3.1 outrage was from people who were already outraged. I really don't know how to get a good measure of that, though.
Apple wasn't first-to-market, and that is why they did so well. Hardly anybody who is first to market does well. Apple intentionally showed up late to smartphone party, letting them watch and learn from the mistakes of their trailblazing competitors.
It's a lot easier to make a good app for the iPhone than for an Android phone. Throw a table controller in a nav controller in a tab controller and you're done. With Android you can mess around with XML for a week and still have an app that looks like crap. I think it's good that they are reaching out, for sure, but I hope they are also really trying to build out their APIs a bit more to make it easier. I've wanted to make an Android app for a while now, but every time I get started, I quit a couple days later out of frustration.
Apple's AppStore reminds me of Google AdSense policy of isolation and almost inexistent customer service. If they ban you: They ban you. There's no possibility to discuss things.
Uh, I beg to differ, and hopefully help some people out, Google's Adwords customer service number is 1.866.2.GOOGLE.
I've had 2 great experiences with them, both involving multiple calls over a week's time solving Adwords account problems. (I'm only managing ~$15,000 ad spend per month, so it wasn't because I'm a big fish.) I do believe that's US support only, but I could be wrong. It's been the better part of a year since I've had to call in.
Parent said AdSense whereas you said AdWords, gigantic difference in the service experience you get. Which is mostly logical since AdWords users are directly paying customers, while AdSense users are more like vendors.
You confused AdWords and AdSense, but I think it's odd that you don't think spending $180k a year with a company would be enough to get you special treatment. You may not be a big fish in Google's pond, but you're definitely spending enough to get noticed and dealt with as such.
My office chair quite literally comes with better phone support than AdSense (or AdWords since I've never spent much).
I still think Google's Adwords customer service is pretty pathetic. When you spend $50,000+ a month and have to go through a lot of work to get the phone number for the first time and then can't get a consistent account rep it is very frustrating. At those kinds of spending levels a lot of companies will roll over for you, even if it isn't a 1,000,000 dollar account.
They also apply their policies very inconsistently, and greatly favor large advertisers. I think their documentation is great, but they need to make a better effort to reach out to advertisers. I am not a huge fan of Microsoft's adcenter, but their customer service is incredible. Their number is always nice and prominent and when you call they will do anything to help, and work hard to get it solved then, where as Google will take their time.
Again this is a sample size of one, but google goes out of their way to not talk to you, they even hide their customer support chat service through several layers of help screens.
Smart move by Google but at the same time I feel like they have some bigger issues to address. We know Android devices are selling pretty well. Why aren't good apps appearing organically? I'd look at 5 major problems:
1) Descriptions and other meta data for apps in the Android Market is atrocious. Lots of apps don't even have an informative description of what they do. Most apps don't have screenshots. This is the developer's responsibility however it hurts the platform as a whole when the user gets frustrated.
2) The top charts are heavily biased towards geeky applications. I have no doubt they register the most downloads but they may discourage people from exploring the Market deeper. A "top grossing" list would be valuable here.
3) The Market displays apps in other currencies. This is confusing. Easily fixable.
4) Some apps in the Market simply aren't compatible with some devices or are otherwise very buggy. This also may discourage people from digging deeper
5) Google Checkout is a total flop. Few use it outside of the Android market. Not sure what the solution is here but it impedes impulse buying for lots of people.
Competition is good, but there's something in that article that made me think:
>“Contrast with Apple’s approach: it took us about three months of resubmitting our app to Apple before they stopped rejecting it for inappropriate content. And even now (after we peaked at the No. 7 paid app)"
It's the "after we peaked at the No. 7 paid app", part. While I think it's pretty amazing that Apple managed to create it's own microindustrial economy within the App store, it seems that a leading motivation for writing Apps is just to be in the App store and get ranked.
Now I know full well this isn't the only reason people write apps for the iPhone, and maybe it's because of the walled garden effect that once you write an App you're dying to get in and hope people use it. But personally, I like the Android ecosystem where writing and distributing software is as native as it is on any computer.
And based on that conjecture alone, I don't think it's an issue of 'quality control'. Taking one giant step back, when you have a format that's easily distributed across whatever medium you choose, and don't put quality apps beside apps of less quality in a closed-off 'store', people don't even notice. They go for the apps they want to use and they can search whatever marketplace has it, to purchase and install it.
Competition in the App Store is good. Consumer choice in the market place is even better. That's why I don't own an iPhone and never will purchase an iPad.
I think that comment was just intended to highlight that even the developer of a pretty successful iPhone application (by the metric of popularity) hasn't received any outreach from Apple.
Developers will develop where they think they will make the most money. Currently, that is Apple's App Store. A $500 phone isn't going to push someone to spending the time and resources to release to Android. At least not someone with very much business sense. I'm not trying to be a hero; I'm trying to make a dollar.
The reason they try harder is because there is far less money to be made on Android. I have the 6th top paid app in the store, Newsroom,(app, not game) and the revenue is nowhere near enough to live on. If I had the 6th top paid app in the iPhone catalog, I'd be writing this on my solid gold Macbook Pro.
There's a reason they are giving away handsets like mad (we've gotten two droids free in the past month).. Money is not enough of a draw yet.
Gotta love the competitive spirit... Now if only their other services would offer such "human" support, as opposed to the maddening, hair-pulling, teeth-wrenching -- yes -- god-questioning expereience it is trying to contact Checkout or AdWords support. (Don't get me wrong -- these are great products when working proper -- it's just when they aren't working, and I'm giving them $500/mo., it seems reasonable that I would be able to talk candidly with someone.)
Adwords has excellent human support. Of course, you have to reach the level where they take enough interest in you. I've found that to be about the $2000/month level.
If you get to the $100K+/yr level then you get a rep. with a direct line that you can appeal to.
Then once you have your adwords rep on board, they are good at helping you get support from other groups... Checkout, Google products, etc.
As soon as Google stops caring so much about Android marketshare -- and they will get bored, or will lose against Apple, or start dominating -- as soon as that happens, developers' helpful "personal contacts" will disappear.
Ask any Adwords advertiser or Google Checkout implementor.
So if your app does well in the iPhone app store, you may get an email from Google evangelists. OTH if your app does well in any other app store, you don't get emails from any evangelists.
This seems to speak to the strength of the iPhone app store and this strength also explains why most developers seem to prefer the iPhone app store :)
Note: I wrote a prototype Android app (with their beta SDK) long before the first Android phone was in the market (and before the iPhone app store was launched). I have successful apps in the iPhone app store, no apps in the Android app store/market.
OTH if your app does well in any other app store, you don't get emails from any evangelists.
A few months ago Google gave out free Droids and N1s to developers whose apps had over 5000 downloads and at least a 3.5 rating. (Of course at the time my app had 4200).
Anyone want to try guessing a date when the Android Market passes the Apple App Store in raw application count? (I know ultimately quality is more important, but it could be a symbolically important day... and might prompt a lighter touch towards developers from Apple.)
More important guess: Will Android pass Apple in terms of market share? They went from nothing to 1/3 of the way there in 1 quarter, pretty much.
Depends on how quickly Apple can make it to other carriers. If I were the carriers, I'd have a few backroom meetings to NOT offer the iPhone (lest they become dumb pipes!).
If I were Android, I'd drop the rev-share for apps to 15% from 30% so developers make more money with less sales. And I'd make sure the carriers got a bit of the rev share.
If I were Apple, I'd take that pile of cash and build out a cellular network ASAP. ;-)
The advantage of Android is that it has an army of hardware manufacturers that can churn phones of different price points. Android can be released in much more countries quickly than the IPhone since these HW companies will be the ones making deals with carriers in different countries.
This is why I think it's a matter of time for Android to overtake the IPhone in terms of unit sales. If the 30+ Android models are actually released later this year, Android will likely surpass the IPhone early next year.
The profits crown will remain with Apple though for a very long time.
Android isn't so much competing on price point (the cheapest android phone is only slightly cheaper than the cheapest iPhone), but on feature sets. Want a large phone with a large high res screen, there's a phone for that. Want to sacrifice a bit of screen size and resolution for longer battery life, there's a phone for that. Want a phone with a keyboard, no problem. Want a slightly smaller phone with a keyboard, you can get that too. And so on and so forth.
But that's exactly the problem for developers. How many different devices are you willing to test on? Will your app's interface easily scale to all these different form factors?
A huge advantage of the iphone is that there's a single screen resolution to optimize for.
If the rumours are to be believed then that advantage will disappear this summer. The iPhone already comes with two different CPU speeds and soon it will have two different resolutions, so any advantage on that front is rapidly disappearing.
Maybe-- isn't the iPhone $99 at this point? I guess the winner in terms of phone sales could be "free" (subsidized by carriers).
Given Apple's profits with the iPhone and economies of scale, they might just be able to compete with that. Give away iPhones, make it back on app sales?
Maybe things have changed, but I've always heard that the App Store is pretty much a break even proposition for Apple. The hardware is where they make all their money. If this becomes a race based solely on price I'm confident Apple will effectively lose (in the sense that they won't be able to command the financial success they have today).
Now android has to try harder with it's marketplace software and infrastructure, where it will really make a large difference in getting developers over.
I still get the message "Sorry, the Nexus One phone is not available in your country or region" on google.com/phone. I can buy a Nexus1 for 500€ on eBay, compared to 139€ for an iPhone 3G with a data contract. I'm still holding out for a decent Android option though.
The HTC Desire is for all intents and purposes exactly the same phone as the Nexus One, and is available just about everywhere for a bit less than the iPhone.
that's kind of comparing apples to oranges. an unlocked iphone is about $1000, but an unlocked nexus one is $529. a t-mobile locked nexus one is only $179, and an at&t locked iphone is $199.
Nexus One isn't the only phone running android. The other popular ones I've heard of are Motorola Droid (the GSM version is called Cliq/MileStone i think so) and HTC Hero.
Also there's a low-end Android phone by HTC called HTC Tattoo. But I would say no to it since you get what you pay for. Not many apps run on it coz of the type of screen it has.
Also no to Sony's Xperia X10 coz it runs Android 1.6 although it's a new phone.
HTC Desire is awesome. Also it has the same specs as Nexus One minus the Google logo. It also addresses some N1 problems :)
I would suggest that you investigate if the manufacturer is the kind that would support you by offering OS updates if a later version of Android releases. HTC seems to be one. I dunno abt Motorola.
Get something that runs the snapdragon processor coz there's a very high possibility that these phones will get updates to a new OS version coz it's capable of running them better.
A tip - develop using the emulator first and then buy a phone :)
P.S: I'm getting a Desire later this month when it releases in my country.
To develop for android does one use a large subset of Java? ...There must be many more developers with a medium-to-heavy Java background than there are Objective-C developers. Any thoughts?
Java's not a very big language, so yes to that. The android libraries aren't dependent on a large subset of the famously huge Java library space, so no to that.
I think you're right that many more programmers are immediately available for Android development than for iPhone/iPad development.
It should be noted though that Android Scripting isn't usable for producing a standalone .apk. ie, you can't use it to build an app to put in the market.
Scala on the other hand, is supposedly production ready. I haven't tried it yet myself, but it's on my to-do list. :-)
An interesting chapter in what is likely to be a long and interesting story. As a 17+ year Microsoft developer I have always been impressed with Microsoft's developer support & tools relative to those of Apple and, earlier (for me) Sun's Java. I am often SO VERY underwhelmed with the support offered to non-Micorsoft developers. Google seems to be using this (the Microsoft) approach and I imagine they will have a lot of success with it!
The person driving the Google's developer relations is Vic Gundotra who was responsible for Microsoft developer relations and development tools for close to 10+ years(I think from 96-06). He is using all the strategies that worked for Microsoft plus new ideas which would never have been possible at Microsoft due its closed nature.
Originally, I wanted to spend my tax return on a Mac so I could partake in iPhone development. Given Apple's recent actions, I'm just going to get an Android phone, and use my current laptop loaded with Ubuntu to develop for it.