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Vine Launches On Android

Posted by samzenpus on from the check-it-out dept.

Dawn Kawamoto writes "Twitter's free social media video app Vine is now on Android. But while the app rocked on the iOS platform, especially among teens, its move to Android has...dare I say...been a bit of a tangled mess. It launched on Google play without the capability for the two apps to sync, nor does it have such features as front-facing camera, search, mentions and hashtags. Another biggie is it doesn't yet allow users to post their six-second videos to Facebook. Vine says it's working on these features and all should be good soon. For now, however, a swing on the vine may not be a robust experience."

33 comments

  1. Ah, Twitter... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "If we crack down on 3rd party developers, that means we don't have to measure our software against the standard they set, right?"

    1. Re:Ah, Twitter... by nedwidek · · Score: 4, Informative

      Almost the point I was going to make. I'd hate to see the code behind this. First of all, if you are supporting the rear camera, the front camera support is all of 5 minutes (button in the UI, and passing the constant for front or rear camera based on the button state).

      Then I read that they are only supporting 4.0+. Seriously? You can do everything they're doing there with the support jar and include all the way back to 2.0. If you want to do it nicely just pull in ActionBarSherlock and PageIndicator.

      --
      Post anonymously - For when your opinion embarrasses even you!
    2. Re:Ah, Twitter... by interkin3tic · · Score: 1

      Seems like it's not just twitter. Facebook seems to be worse, despite being out for years. It still takes up half the ram on my ipad no matter what I do short of removing it. On my android, it somehow eats a third of my battery.

    3. Re:Ah, Twitter... by maccodemonkey · · Score: 3, Informative

      Then I read that they are only supporting 4.0+. Seriously? You can do everything they're doing there with the support jar and include all the way back to 2.0. If you want to do it nicely just pull in ActionBarSherlock and PageIndicator.

      ActionBarSherlock has it's own bugs, and it adds inconsistencies.

      It's just easier to support 4.0 and higher, and with 4.0's market share climbing you'll see this more and more. It's not worth taking the download size increase, additional bugs, or additional inconsistencies in ActionBarSherlock, when you could just support the OS most of your users are likely to use anyway.

      Plus, there are improvements around the camera in 3.0 and higher that ActionBarSherlock doesn't fix.

    4. Re:Ah, Twitter... by yincrash · · Score: 1

      I imagine the camera API is the biggest reason they went 4.0+ only. Putting version wrappers around all that junk is probably not fun. ABS is fairly rock solid, so I wouldn't really consider that that much a reason to hold back 1/3 of the android market.

    5. Re:Ah, Twitter... by maccodemonkey · · Score: 1

      ABS is fairly rock solid, so I wouldn't really consider that that much a reason to hold back 1/3 of the android market.

      We've seen issues with ActionBarSherlock. Not enough to keep us from releasing the app, but definitely enough to cause development fits.

      ABS has been good about fixing bugs, but again, that's just one more thing that gets in the way that we'd rather do without.

    6. Re:Ah, Twitter... by nedwidek · · Score: 1

      The only thing in 4.0 that I could agree with you on is that 4.0 added a face detection API (in fact it was the only API change in android.hardware for 4.0). As far as a wrapper being not fun/onerous.... That might confuse a Java 101 student and yeah, wrappers aren't glitzy, but you do it everywhere. Any time you need to account for hardware or OS options you have to do something (this goes for iOS and Android). In this case you do everything you would have done and if the version is less than 4.0 don't do the face detection or offer the option. Someone above claimed 3.0 made marked improvements in the Camera API. The ability to use an OpenGL ES surface instead of a SurfaceHolder for the preview window is certainly nice, but... If you want to use it with fallback support it is as simple as detect version of Android and inflate the SurfaceHolder layout for 2.x devices or the SurfaceTexture layout for 3.x+ devices. SurfaceTexture is where you need to add all sorts of code actually displaying the preview. The SurfaceHolder version doesn't need any code.

      Hey it's their app and I'm not saying that they shouldn't go ahead and make their own decisions on support. I will say that for what this app does, the no 2.x/3.x support makes me question the skill of the team behind this. Could they be planning to go back and add back support? Sure, but it's much easier to just bake it in from the beginning.

      --
      Post anonymously - For when your opinion embarrasses even you!
    7. Re:Ah, Twitter... by triffid_98 · · Score: 1

      You make the 14 teenagers who love both Twitter and Cyanogen sad....

  2. An invisible man marries an invisible woman. by spiffydudex · · Score: 1

    The kids were nothing to look at either.

    Bad puns are simply that. Bad.

  3. Anti Social by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    I am tired of going on tech sites and reading about phones and apps. I want something important, something news worthy. I could care less about a shitty 6 second video clip that some marginally famous ass hair made.

    1. Re:Anti Social by aaaaaaargh! · · Score: 0

      Agreed. Slashvertising fucking telephone software... how deep can /. sink?

    2. Re:Anti Social by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      You could argue that facetweet shit, while retarded, is still a highly consequential area of events.

      But /. isn't a financial journal for investors and speculators. Or at least it's not supposed to be.

  4. Watch out for that tree! by bandy · · Score: 1

    Watch out for thatOOOHtreeeee!

    --
    "You might as well get your son a ticket to hell as give him a five string banjo." -unknown minister
  5. Why is it so squishy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Does it still have creepy substandard amateur porn?

    1. Re:Why is it so squishy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Does it still have creepy substandard amateur porn?

      what makes you think there were ever standards?

  6. Trol lol slshdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    http://qubemod.com/

  7. Ah, Android... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    "If we call our platform 'open,' that means we don't have to worry when it takes developers far longer to deliver far worse software than on competing platforms, right?"

    1. Re:Ah, Android... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean like win phone? lulz

    2. Re:Ah, Android... by Nerdfest · · Score: 2

      More accurately, if we make our platform open, we can clearly demonstrate that certain application developers don't seem to be particularly competent.

    3. Re:Ah, Android... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And yet the article notes that the same application developers seem to have done a pretty bang-up job on iOS.

      At what point do you begin to admit to yourself that maybe your platform *is* part of the reason "certain application developers" are having trouble delivering the same quality they've already delivered on another platform?

    4. Re:Ah, Android... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you sure it's the same developers that work on both iOS and Android versions? often times iOS shops just outsource the Android dev and you end up with a really shitty product.

    5. Re:Ah, Android... by jareth-0205 · · Score: 1

      And yet the article notes that the same application developers seem to have done a pretty bang-up job on iOS.

      At what point do you begin to admit to yourself that maybe your platform *is* part of the reason "certain application developers" are having trouble delivering the same quality they've already delivered on another platform?

      Er... *of course* it's easier to support iOS than Android? I'm a big fan of Android, and a devloper for the last 3 years, but the idea that you can support 1000+ phones vs about 5 for exactly the same cost is ludicrous. However, the overhead is small, the OS is designed to scale well. Every team I've worked in have had roughly the same speed as the iOS teams doing the same thing.

      It's a bit stupid to compare 2 platforms based on one app, where the Android has only just been released & is basically still beta, and the iOS has been out for months. Chances are they didn't start development at the same time.

    6. Re:Ah, Android... by discord5 · · Score: 1

      "If we call our platform 'open,' that means we don't have to worry when it takes developers far longer to deliver far worse software than on competing platforms, right?"

      Meanwhile in Redmond on the end of an infinitely superior phone: "Oh hey there Steve, how's that windows phone thing working out for you? Got any market chairs to throw around latelty? Man, I'd love to chat on the phone all night but I've got this successful mobile OS to play with."

      I hope there's no Ikea shop nearby.

    7. Re:Ah, Android... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Er... *of course* it's easier to support iOS than Android?

      This is exactly the point.

      Google should be looking at this, and devoting significant amounts of lean tissue and brainpower to figuring out how to "support 1000+ phones." We keep hearing "Android is write once, run anywhere," and yet in practice, it seems like this is a hard ideal to achieve. But rather than admit the obvious - that it's a hard problem, and one which needs some serious mitigation efforts, the problem is always "LOL BAD DEVS" or "LOL RTFM."

      You can't have it both ways - either your platform is super easy to support, and worth supporting for high-profile apps, or it's actually HARD to support across all the devices, and this is an intractable problem that comes with the platform.

    8. Re:Ah, Android... by jareth-0205 · · Score: 1

      Well, they are, moving all the new functionality announced at Google IO as services provided by Google Play, which will be rolled out to all devices post-2.1.

      Ultimately the restricted platform will lose in mobile in the same way as it did in desktop computing. People have different needs, and one vision cannot provide for them.

    9. Re:Ah, Android... by Nerdfest · · Score: 2

      ... also it's only *slightly* harder, and the benefit is worth it. Limited phones to one or two models, being told what you can and can't run, being forced to a single software repository is ridiculous, and I'm amazed that people tolerate it. I'm sure the fans will be happy when Apple *invents* widgets and customizable screens in the next few versions of iOS.

    10. Re:Ah, Android... by Nerdfest · · Score: 1

      It is not particularly endearing to have your favoured platform treated as a second class citizen in time and quality though. I've started dumping services and companies that do it. If you're only going to support a single platform, perhaps it should be a good mobile web site instead. Tying things to only Apple only ever benefits Apple in the end.

    11. Re:Ah, Android... by jareth-0205 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, true. But since pretty much every mobile website I've come across has been inferior to the most thrown together app, I still favour apps. While designers and hipsters favour iPhones, the first cut of most apps is probably going to go that way.

  8. Yet another proof the Apocalypse is upon us. by tqk · · Score: 3, Funny

    Another biggie is it doesn't yet allow users to post their six-second videos to Facebook.

    --
    "Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit ..." -- Pink Floyd.
  9. Appropriate Article by JeanCroix · · Score: 1

    http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/06/01/0429200/too-many-smart-people-chasing-too-many-dumb-ideas

  10. In other news... by ttucker · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Nobody cares.

  11. can someone answer why it took them so long? by JimBobJoe · · Score: 1

    The article says they got 13 million users in a year. I feel like the company would have come out with an Android version faster than that...maybe like 2-3 million users.

  12. What is vine? by hobarrera · · Score: 0

    So what is vine?

    The website says absolutely nothing, there are apps for two OSs I don't use, no web interface, no description...?

    Does it have ANY market share? Why should we care?