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SDK Shoot Out, Android Vs. IPhone
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister delves into the Android and iPhone SDKs to help sort out which will be the best bet for developers now that technical details of the first Android smartphone have been announced. Whereas the iPhone requires an Intel-based Mac running OS X 10.5.4 or later, ADC membership, and familiarity with proprietary Mac OS X dev tools, the standard IDE for Android is Eclipse. And because most tasks can be performed with command-line tools, you can expert third parties to develop Android SDK plug-ins for other IDEs. Objective-C, used almost nowhere outside Apple, is required for iPhone UI development, while app-level Android programming is done in Java. 'By just about any measure, Google's Android is more open and developer-friendly than the iPhone,' McAllister writes, noting Apple's gag order restrictions on documentation, proprietary software requirements to view training videos, and right to reject your finished app from the sole distribution channel for iPhone. This openness is, of course, essential to Android's prospects. 'Based on raw market share alone, the iPhone seems likely to remain the smartphone developer's platform of choice — especially when ISVs can translate that market share into application sales,' McAllister writes. 'Sound familiar? In this race, Apple is taking a page from Microsoft's book, while Google looks suspiciously like Linux.'"
Developers weren't happy when Apple told them to go write their programs as Javascript webapps instead of native code with the first iPhoneOS, why would they be any happier being told to write applications in Java? Thankfully it's not as limited as Javascript, but it's still not native code. I think this will be the Achilles Heel for Android, just like it was for iPhoneOS 1.x.
And what's with the complaining about Objective-C? If you can write in C++, you can write in Objective-C. It's slightly different from everything else in some fairly trivial ways, some better and some worse but none of them a significant change. It's not as if Apple is forcing everyone to write in Fortran.
Give the fat people AIDS. They'll lose weight and die, decreasing the amount of methane they produce, which will solve global warming.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
'Sound familiar? In this race, Apple is taking a page from Microsoft's book, while Google looks suspiciously like Linux.'"
No, Apple is worse than Microsoft. MS might be heavy handed with their vendors - but they have typically supported their developer base throughout their history. They understood, I think, that fundamentally, developers are a major asset to any "platform". Apple has never had this attitude. It still shows, from time to time they will just shamelessly rebuild someone's idea instead of at least offering that person or company some compensation for their ideas. Apple makes brash changes to their API's forcing developers to fix their software. Microsoft, is still support VB (for better or worse).
What's worse, Apple is squashing competition from indiviudals and companies alike. Not only are they trying to stifle competition in a MSesq way - but now they are killing the little guy too. I would arge that the individual can be far more innovate than an entire team of coders working day and night. It is the indiviudal's singular understanding of a problem, and vision for a solution that makes the work of one so special. Instead of embracing the potential innovations of the individual, and acknowleding the ideas and learning from them - they simply refuse to let them see the light of day.
I guess then, this makes Apple more like the 10th century Catholic church.