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Google Hiring Android Devs To Close the 'Apps Gap'
jfruhlinger writes "Google is reportedly hiring Android developers specifically to boost the number of apps available for the platform. Obviously there's money to be made, but the search giant is no doubt also driven by the gap between Android and iOS apps in both quantity and quality."
Mr. President, we must not allow a app gap!
This sort of reminds me of that Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon (I think) where they speed up the car by moving the speedometer. Alternatively, Google could just concentrate on building a platform that doesn't suck.
The problem is that we would then get awful Android applications.
My provider (Bell Canada) as an application for Android, to manage your account. It is awful. Obviously ported from the iPhone, with the ugly buttons/tabs wasting space at the bottom and the "back" button at the top left. They forgot that Android had a "menu" and a "back" button. I bet there would be even more of these if there was a tool to translate objective-C to Java. Anyway, Java is a way more popular language than Objective-C, so I don't think the lack of developers is an issue.
Obviously there's money to be made
As a developer, I would like to be shown what makes it so obvious. Every developer I have asked says similar, if you cant get an application that's heavily used you wont be making much money in the Android platform, and then you will very likely make most that money through advertisement.
I honestly want to see actual analysis that show that developing for Android is really an obvious money making path. I am very aware that there is no certain success in any platform. Seeing comparisons of cross-platform titles and showing the Android equivalent making more money would be the best example. Maybe the web is full of Apple Fanboi propaganda, but I just cant find any success stories in the Android Market that rival the iOS equivalents.
I don't think this will happen. Google would prefer it if devs shifted the focus from iOS to Android, the app you speak of would allow developers to continue focusing on iOS and port to Android as an afterthought. Android might just end up with slower iOS apps which don't really follow the conventions of android.
How about they make they audit the existing apps and get rid of the crap.
Most of the applications that I want already exist. There are a few specialized apps that I may need to wait around for from various service providers (Comcast is one of them), but I don't necessarily think its a great idea to close the gap via spamming the app store.
because that is really whats missing from the android app store. all those "awesome"iOS apps that a single developer makes 30 copies of and spams the market with.
I don't think such a tool would be worth the effort, particularly when even good versions of such translation tools almost always need to be heavily audited to ensure functionality, and most of the time the automated code is far less efficient than the original. I suppose you could take a "it's better than nothing" view of the situation, but realistically I don't think that flooding the Android market with a bunch of poor quality translated apps is going to be their goal when tackling the problem of low quality apps.
That said, I've never noticed a problem with it personally. As an Android and iPod Touch user I've never found a gap in what I could do on one vs the other.
The ONLY thing that I find better on the iPod isn't really an app on that side: the music player. The default music player on my Android phone is clunky and hard to use. It works much, much better on the iPod. On the other hand, the podcast functionality of that built in music player pales in comparison to what I can do with DoggCatcher on my Android phone.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Wasn't this why Google developed the App Inventor, but then didn't let people actually sell apps developed with it in the App Store?
So maybe we should ask the question of exactly why it is lagging in the app department. Apple never ran out and hired a billion people to write apps - yet they have more.
Is it the language? (C-Like vs. Java)? The "sleekness" and appeal of the OS itself? The mere fact that it's been on the market longer?
I, for one, am an open-source fanatic. I work as a Linux/kernel development engineer, and think Apple is evil.
I also own an iPhone, and write iPhone apps in my spare time. Why? Personally for me, the phone and the OS are beautiful and elegant. I love the platform, and the outcome of my work - and it's easy too to make money with one appstore to have to sell it on (even if the Apple bastards take 30%).
I find Android slow, clunky, and Java-based SDK's (like Eclipse and the Blackberry dev environment) to be the same - where XCode is smoothe and elegant - even if I did have to go buy a Mac in order to develop for it!
So that's the reason why I develop for iPhone. My point though is the following: Answer the question for a majority of iPhone developers, and you'll discover the remedy to the problem - don't just think that hiring a hundred - or a thousand Android app developers will fix the gap!
With app stores having hundreds of thousands of apps, and with Google already having tons of loyal and enthusiastic developers, it seems unlikely that they would now decide to start hiring developers to write miscellaneous apps for their app store.
They know that the best way to get good apps into their store is to attract developers with a great platform, good sales figures, good dev tools, a good app store, etc. They are well aware of their weaknesses, including some aspects of their app store and platform fragmentation, and they are working on these issues.
These new app developers that they are hiring are probably going to work on some of the Google specific apps that needs (lots of) work. For example, their finance app still only supports U.S. exchanges (how do you think the rest of the world feels about that), and their Listen app has all sorts of problems and hasn't been updated in a long time. These Google apps have suffered as resources have been shifted to the core platform; now Google needs app developers to bring their own apps up to speed.
Maybe they would have more apps if the App Market place would work all over the word. Paid apps don't work in some European countries because there is no unified payment system like with Apple's App store. Although the Android user base might be larger than that of iOS Apple still has more paying customers. Google needs to see that the Market needs a serious boost in functionality. If revenue will increase developers will come.
I have yet to find an app for Android that converts my Android phone to an iPhone 4, which is really the only app anyone could ever want. :P
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Well since apparently I know nothing about Slashdot and convinced myself that I could post anonymously and not wipe out my moderation, I'm now free to respond to this.
http://developer.android.com/index.html is simply phenomenal. There's helpful guides and code samples; I was able to go from zero mobile development experience and having used Java 7 years ago to developing my own app in a week or two of side project work.
The only time I really strayed from that site was while looking into alternative database frameworks and setting up unit and integration tests. In those situations google usually turned up good results for my searches.
Not that I have an issue with hot babes, but there are a ton of pseudo-porn apps in the android market. Sometimes many by the same developer. If they want to raise their profile by catching up in quantity and quality, they should set some standards and use the rating system to remove some of the junk that's come to litter the market.
Over the weekend, I attempted two different "Lemmings" apps which were both garbage - all the reviews said they were garbage and I left my own saying the same thing. When an app gets nothing but negative reviews, it should go.
"Lame" - Galaxar
A while back it was considered one of Microsoft's evil ways, that they sold an OS and the leading apps on it. It was considered an unfair advantage because they had access to api's and the OS writing team, with a greater level of access than other companies.
In the same way, people get frustrated that Apple has prevented other developers to publish certain apps that are similar to Apple ones. This has changed over time but at least for a while it was a key argument.
Now, Google is going to start competing against the app marketplace in a larger way.
Beyond just an admission that there is a lack of quality apps for Android, or that the economy of apps on Android is not yet mature enough to draw the larger scale development that has begun to focus on Apple (especially with games but also with productivity tools), this is now an 800 lb Gorilla. Can you write your killer app before Google does it and gives it away?
How long before Google starts buying small developers who develop cool multiplatform apps and then squelch their development on Apple?
And kill Android the same way Windows APIs on OS/2 let people code for Windows and make people use the Windows APIs and not the native ones. Steve Jobs is not dumb trying to force everyone to use only their tools and APIs (evil yes, but not dumb), If you want something like it, it will not come from Google. There is a tool to do that in reverse direction but that will never comes from Apple, no matter if the application numbers and quality iOS vs Android is reversed
Yeah, it's an iPod. I hope its music player is much, much better seeing as iPods are built to be music players. There are lots of examples of this, but I am too lazy to think of a good one
The world is how you make it
.
The idea that you can make money off an idea is bull. You make money off solving a problem, creating value. Ideas are cheap as can be. Results are another story. I've been giving away ideas my whole life, and selling the work to make them real instead. That works fine. Eye-pee is for morons.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
I really haven't had much use for the Android marketplace, but I did decide I wanted to check out what Angry Birds was all about. Going into the marketplace and searching for "Angry Birds" returned an absolute mess of results. As a user, I shouldn't have to weed through all of the crap to find a well-known application, especially since Google is first and foremost a search engine company.
Indeed there are some gaps.
Very very long story short, I've recently gone back to my iphone 4 from an Android device. Although the apps were not my primary reason for doing so, I will say I did have some difficulty finding some apps which suited my needs.
Primarily and most importantly for myself, I'm a tightass - infact a lot of nerds are. So I want a free app which will cover my needs. Oddly enough the iphone has several free RDP applications which work quite well, I use one of these at least 2 or 3 times a week and absoloutely need it.
On Android I can not for the life of me find an RDP application which supports multiple entries and lets me save them. The restrictions to the free versions are all too tight.
I don't mind ads on my phone, I don't care if there's a box as I open the app or even if I'm forced to see a static ad image for 1 or 2 seconds before the app opens, I just want a free and good RDP app. No such luck.
Also, the media playback tools are frankly, ugly rubbish. It's such a giant shame as I have a 4.3" Android phone and I prefer it to the iphone 4 picture (yep, size matters) - the resolution is still good enough on the 4.3" screen (double the iphone 3GS pixel densite) it's just the media tools pale in comparison to apple.
I suppose I should've done some research, infact yes I should have but I blindly went in and had this crazy idea that without these idiot apple restrictions, I'd have this amazingly powerful device to play media back with.
I want to be able to copy an divx / avi file (example an episode of top gear) on to the device and just plain play the thing. You know what else? I'd like to be able to play it over my SMB network if I'm at home, I have wireless, why can't I do that?
The file structure for media is ugly and gross, the device itself needs to follow a standard.
Movies should be placed in X location and _!ALL!_ Android applications should check that location (only) as default for media, period. - you should be able to add more folders in the Android OS - not per application. A nice standard so that when you try a new media player, they all know where your 'library' is and can display the data clearly and simply.
There is something similar to this in the system but it's hamfisted and messy. Many applications just ask you to navigate and browse the phone. I love that I can do that, I am still a nerd but I'm an aging nerd, I would like it simple and logical.
Furthermore the codec support, admitedly not googles fault, I know but god damnit I had to convert stupid files on the iphone with itunes and sync via a cable (gross!) but with Android it's not much better. I want to just play back my media, the device needs more codec support (apparently the Galaxy S has licensed quite a few codecs and is better - but we need consistency across the damned platform)
I could elaborate further on the media stuff and be quite specific but I'd be here for ages, I'm sure the point is clear- this is currently..'clumsy' and needs to be cleaned up, simplified and improved. This beautiful little thing has so much potential and falls short.
Podcast solutions:
If you used itunes, besides the horrible sync with PC aspect of it and the nasty UI of itunes, it does 'just work' and the podcast playback tool is leaps and bounds superior.
The consistency in the UI for a start is helpful. The rewind 30 second button? genius, the fact I get to see the podcast description and the podcast 'banner' or graphic? great. (I tried several on the android, like RDP solutions, nothing quite fit my needs right)
I do love my Android device but oddly enough it's more the concept of what it could be and the hardware I love most more than anything.
My iphone 4 has superior battery life, more reliable (at least in regards to market application upgrade and installs) it has a better UI for media playback it just falls short in the fact the screen is stupid small, it's locked down and apples ridiculous design choice of one button holds it back (4 or 5 dedicated butt
Google would prefer it if devs shifted the focus from iOS to Android
Then why does Google continue to require 3G support on devices sold in the United States before a device is allowed to use the Android Market application? For all the restrictions of Apple's App Store, at least iPod touch and iPad are allowed in, unlike Archos products which are limited to AppsLib instead of Android Market..
I have a popular App out there on the iPhone App Store and I have been toying around with porting it to Android. There are several factors into me not getting fully behind the effort yet (mainly there are only 24 hours in a day) - but if Google would in$entivize me to port the App, I'd be all over it. But so far the drive just isn't there.
I'll get around to it, but more on my schedule. I would imagine if they came out with an incentive program to port the popular and well done Apps, many would jump on it. Hell, even a free Nexus S and I'd be over it.
I am not saying Android is any better or worse than the iPhone, just many don't have the time to maintain multiple code bases.
I often find myself wishing that so many Android apps weren't cloud based
Blame Google, which by and large doesn't (officially) let Archos tablets or other devices without 3G data onto its Market. If there were more Wi-Fi-only device owners buying apps, developers would have more of an incentive to make apps that work offline.
From what i understand, the Apple App Store does a pretty good job of promoting the good apps and making it easy to find what you're looking for. The Android App Store on the other hand is a total mess. The promotion system is so-so, the categories are rather broad, and the actual search system is very primitive. If you don't know the exact name of the app you're looking for to use as a search term it can be very hit or miss.
So perhaps what Google needs is better organization and searching for the App Store, rather than new and better apps. Perhaps they could hire some kind of company that specializes in search engines to improve their app store for them?
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bzzzzt, doesn't work on your crappy phone, go buy a new one
bzzzt doesn't work on your IOS version, upgrade, which by the way, you'll need to buy a new phone for
buncha jerks
Hey, the wife thought she was doing me a favor by giving me a cool smartphone. She didn't realize what she was really doing was inflicting iTunes on me.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I assure you that with hundreds of thousands of apps, Apple has just as many crap apps as Google. In fact they most likely have far _more_ crap apps than Google. The problem is that Apple does a better job of letting you find the good ones and avoid the bad ones. Perhaps that's what you meant, but if so you should have said that you _see_ a lot of shit in Google's App Store, unlike Apple's App Store.
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...a la the PS3 and XBox 360 development houses...?
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What good would that do? It's not like Java is some esoteric language and software companies can't find anyone to write Android apps in it. Or, if you're implying that this conversion tool would let you port iPhone apps to Android, the programming language isn't the main barrier to that. It's the completely different APIs.
As disgruntled Android 2.2 user from a Nokia/BlackBerry/etc. background I say fix the core Android apps (calendar, notes, messaging, etc., etc.) as these SUCK big time as even the most basic versions of these are way better on non-smart-phones even! Now that's saying something about how poor they are! Get the basics right then start worrying about more apps. Quality before quantity.
I suppose someone could come up with an app that stops you from loading other apps not approved by some arbitrary third party if you want... it could be built to disable the micro-sd slot too... most of the other features available on Android that the iPhone can't do could probably be disabled by an app... Not sure how to get an app to weld the battery compartment shut though... and you'd have to pay about $200-$300 for the app to get the price point about right... That should be close to an Android -> iPhone conversion.
When I did a search for "angry birds" in the Marketplace, Angry Birds was the first result. Are you sure the game had been released yet when you searched for it?
It's really not valid to point out that Apple lets the iPod Touch, and iPad into the store, Apple owns the store and manufactures and sells those items
Then why isn't there a Nexus PDA in addition to the Nexus phones?
3G support is a reasonable requirement, at this point no smart phone should be without it
I already have a perfectly good phone and don't want another. I'm happy with Wi-Fi on a handheld computer/PDA. Should people like this have to buy an unlocked phone at retail price and just never put a SIM in it?