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Why Android Is the New Windows
An anonymous reader writes "Windows' dominance of the PC market has been good in many ways: reduced hardware costs, increased IT literacy and a standard development platform to name a few. Perhaps Android will bring similar benefits. But unless Google are very careful, it is likely to bring some of the same problems, too."
Window's dominance of the PC market has been good in many ways ... increased IT literacy
What?! That's like saying McDonald's did anything for fine cuisine. Gimme a break!
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Looks like I'm sticking with the iPhone for a while then. I've gotten to the point where I'll happily sacrifice a small amount of money and a little flexibility in exchange for a well-vetted, vertically integrated solution rather than an assembly kit that I can use - if I wish - to build something great. With the increased power to do your own thing all to frequently comes the need to do your own thing, with your own time and your own money. Not on my phone, thanks - I'll leave tinkering to the hobbies I choose rather than a useful accessory for my life. And yes, I'm a developer.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
"The entire phenomenon of viruses and malware is a result of the proliferation of Windows, the people behind malware take advantage of that same standard development platform."
This sentence is so stupid that it invalidates the arguments contained within the entire article. Who thinks that if Apple and their marriage of hardware and software were to have only existed in some anti-Capra Steve Jobs as Mister Potter world of computing, that viruses and malware would have not existed? Because there are no viruses for MAC OS? By that logic, wouldn't NeXT Step have been the most secure UNIX ever? To lay the existence of malware at Redmond's feet is to be so ignorant of computing and O/S design as to make anything said about Android totally and completely moot.
Sort of like developing for the PC, right? I know, we should all move to vendor-locked consoles.
Well, when you've got such a tight-fisted control freak attitude it's not hard to ram everyone into a few boxes.
Microsoft basically dictated every bit of hardware used at the level of the OS. There are some minor differentiating features, but they're all basically the exact same hardware with different attachments (displays, speakers,) plastic cases and vendor logos.
I'm an android developer, and I *do* share his concerns. There are three aspects to the problem:
1. Unintended device differences.
I've had loads of emails from people saying that my app behaves incorrectly on their phone, whereas it works perfectly well on mine and many other phones. There are certain areas of development where the differences in behaviour on different devices can be pretty huge. In my case it is sleeping and waking the device, but there are others, like sound latency, graphics capabilities, and multitouch behaviour (*cough* stupid dual-touch *cough*). You really do need to test these apps on the actual phones in order to make sure they work (or wait for "I am shocked that this free, ad-free app doesn't work." emails).
2. Intended device differences.
There are a ton of different android phones. Suppose you want a layout to work nicely on all of them. Android has a pretty nice framework for selecting a layout file based on device differences, and these are only *some* of the things it can consider: orientation, whether the keyboard is open, screen size, screen aspect ratio and night mode. Multiply those and you have a lot of work. Ok presumably you wouldn't use all of them, but you could *easily* end up with 6 layouts for one screen. It doesn't help that Android's layout system is one of... no *the* least well behaved I've used. It frequently does stuff that makes no sense (search StackOverflow for examples).
3. Old versions of Android.
Yes it is a bigger problem than on iOS. 17% of users are still on Android 1.5 or 1.6. How many iOS users haven't upgraded their OS for a year? Actually I checked, and Apple stopped providing updates for the original iPhone 2.5 years after its release. It seems most Android phones don't even last a year before they are end-of-lined. This affects developers because it means you can't use the latest nice APIs without either using ugly reflection hacks (not possible with the NDK) or ignoring some users.
There's lots to like about Android, but don't pretend there aren't any flaws.