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Holo Theme Is Now Mandatory For Android Devices
tripleevenfall writes in about the new theme changes in Android 4.0. From the article: "Starting with Android 4.0, support for the 'Holo' theme will be mandatory for phones and tablets that have the Android Market installed. Holo is the stock Android theme, known for its sharp angles, thin lines and blue hue. Third-party developers can now create apps and widgets using the default Android aesthetic, knowing that's how it'll look on every major Ice Cream Sandwich device that has the Android Market. "
This is not banning custom themes; instead it is merely giving developers a consistent theme that is guaranteed to be installed if they want a consistent look across all devices. There are even a few improvements to the style protocol to help developers deal with dark and light themes.
Will the users be allowed to change the theme?
"This is not banning custom themes; instead it is merely giving developers a consistent theme that is guaranteed to be installed if they want a consistent look across all devices."
I think you missed that sentence.
There's no wall here at all, just a foundation. You can still do whatever the heck you want with your device as a consumer, and this is just saying that manufacturer's shouldn't completely break the underlying UI structure, even if they want to supplant it with some theme of their own. "Do what you want with the field, just don't salt the Earth so nobody else can use it".
Holo theme is not mandatory, only support for the Holo theme for devices that use the Android marketplace. So applications can be written that use the Holo theme with some confidence that they will display correctly. This is a good thing. It gives developers a minimum standard look and feel that is required to work.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
No, I think it's generally applied to people who are incapable of seeing the flaws in the things they like, and cannot have a rational discussion about them. It's people who somehow have an emotional investment in their chosen product being "the best" and anyone who chooses differently, for any reason, is "wrong".
It's perfectly fine to have a favorite, it's not perfectly fine to be blinded to alternatives.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Actually if he wasn't disingenuous to his own damn post, maybe he wouldn't be branded a troll. First he quotes part of the article that hints at Google's plan to make the UI theme more accessible to app developers, and then he turns it on it's head and says this will increase fragmentation... Because nothing says "fragmentation" like making app developers have to do LESS to cleanly support the OS. Then he links to an article as a claim of faith (re: the Galaxy line not getting rev 4 software), and completely leaves out the article from approximately a day later that showed Samsung was reversing their position due to customer outcry. And to top it all off, to not sound too much like a anti-google shill he throws in the sentence "Requiring support for a theme is a step in the right direction" which makes no sense at all given the nature of the rest of his argument.
He slapped together some canned flamebait responses and didn't bring anything about the actual article to this thread (or anything new at all for that matter) so yes he earned those downmods.
As I've observed in other comments, the iPhone 3GS running the latest version of iOS by version number isn't that impressive since the major new functionality is still locked out of the device (typically for sales reasons rather than hardware reasons such as with Siri). It's cool that you get to see a number which is the same number on newer phones, but it only grants you a carefully selected subset of the most basic of the new functionality, so it's not really the same version after all.
In contrast, on Android, if your device is at certain version, it has access to all the features from that OS version that your hardware can support (eg, you can't depend on a gyroscope if none is present).
Your chart should be updated to indicate how far back all the new major features are supported. Apple's roadmap will suddenly terminate full-feature-support for each phone line on the first SDK release after a newer phone is launched.
In the mean time, although you can still target back to iPhone 3 OS versions in XCode (letting you include people with a device that is more than two years old but excluding you from using any newer features), you can still download Android SDK's back to API level 3 (the first public api level). So you can target every commercial Android phone at once as long as you either stick within the feature set from those original devices or you're clever enough to write code that knows how to fail gracefully when a more modern feature is unavailable. For example, we do this with one of our apps which has an NFC option (first available I think in API level 10, Android 2.3.3), but has plenty of non-NFC functionality as well - targeting API level 7 (Android 2.1) and conditionally using more recent APIs if the phone's OS supports them.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
*thankyou* I'm an ios dev and it's nice to see some rationale discussion about platforms instead of the typical feces tossing match that typically occurs here.
but it only grants you a carefully selected subset of the most basic of the new functionality, so it's not really the same version after all.
That's a pretty huge exaggeration. The only missing features for the 3GS are Siri and in-place photo editing. 2 features of 200+ added with iOS 5. Big deal.