Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
while I agree with you on most of the apple tools, debugger integration is not really their strongest point.
Now I haven't even looked sideways at the iPhone SDK but I'm still curious. Since xcode is just a UI on top of gcc, couldn't you just as easily do all your development for the SDK on the command line (accepting that you might be better off doing the interface development in interface builder). Sure, your probably still stuck on a mac since the SDK isn't available elsewhere, but it seems like you could use the command line or even eclipse as your SDK if you were willing to put in the time to configure it.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
It's really weird to read that "Based on raw market share alone, the iPhone seems likely to remain the smartphone developer's platform of choice"... Don't tell me that the iPhone already outselled every single Windows-based PDA/Smartphone sold in the last 10-or-so years...
Now, I see the Android as a much serious threat to Microsoft in the smartphone playground than the iPhone. If the Android devices are polished and slick enough, the public might catch on them, and with the openness regarding the development process, the comunity would surely correct the eventual rough edges. That's simply not the case with the iPhone: why can't I use another email client on the iPhone? Oh, right, it "competes" with the native aplication...
"A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
That's a good point and probably true, especially for developing for the Simulator. In fact even the helper apps (like converting to iPhone-preferred audio formats) are all command line tools. However, it seems like it would be a huge amount of work for little gain to unhook it from XCode, but I would be surprised if it couldn't be done once you figure out the zillion-and-one configuration issues.
I know we're all under NDA, but I've had very little problems with debugger integration. There's sometimes the frustrating unexplained BAD_ACCESS, but in general I can see threads, allocations, I/O, memory leaks, locks, allocations, SQL reads/writes/locks, OpenGL monitors, etc etc etc. I thought it was pretty impressive myself. Gotta love DTrace.
E pluribus unum
A story mentioning Google without a "donoevil" tag?? Someone must be falling asleep at the switch.
In all seriousness, does the average consumer care about the underlying stuff? The "problem" with iPhone apps is that they look good, they're easy to install and they generally work. That's all the average person cares about. More and more people have iPods and thus iTunes and so are used to having the process of transfering Item A (music) to Item B (their iPod.) Now swap music for application and iPod for iPhone and you've got a something people are familiar with. Granted, that _might_ change if Google does create their own version of the Google store, but it depends how they pimp it. My guess is appropriate apps will show up in search results, the same way as their ads are tied to whatever it is for which you are searching. Now that might tip things toward them. Everybody uses "The Google" and they're all familiar with it....
Bark less. Wag more.
Indeed, let us all be glad that Microsoft won the PC war instead of Apple. Jobs would have been worse.
It's more complicated than that. Although I agree with the general sentiment.
It wasn't so much that Microsoft won. It's more along the lines of IBM losing and Apple losing more. Or rather, IBM winning by losing and Apple losing by winning. IBM lost control of its platform which then became a commodity platform to take over the industry. Apple maintained control of their platform(s) and became marginalized players in a market they were a major part in creating.
Microsoft was, of course, a major part of this history. And their role tends to shift over the years. At first they were a key component in allowing Compaq to start the (legal) "IBM clone" market. They then shift to becoming the (or at least one of the very few) common factor to the new commodity market - gatekeepers who in turn begin to influence the direction of that market.
It should be noted that Microsoft's developer-driven focus is part and parcel of the overall market. Proprietary platforms were the old world (something Sun had to re-learn). Microsoft was operating in a commodity world - or at least, riding the wave of commodity hardware. That mindset was in stark contrast to Apple's.
Not true... It can be made to work on PPC macs with a few minor tweaks and the assistance of Pacifist. What you can't do is sign apps so that they can be run on an external device(the app signer isn't a universal binary). I use the sdk at home on my PPC powerbook, and check the code into my subversion repository, then when on an intel based Mac, sign the apps and test on the iPhone. Not ideal, but its better than nothing.
Which is wholly irrelevant.
Until I can write apps for it that target the Linux environment underneath, or even replace the kernel, the fact that it is based on Linux is pointless. I can name a LOT of other phones that are Linux based. They're not open either.
Ever programmed in Objective C? It's really an elegant design, and most developers seem to have no problem adjusting to it. Rather than thinking that it's unfortunate that Apple chose such an uncommon language for development, I think that it's unfortunate that Objective C hasn't gotten more acceptance outside of Apple.