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Android Co-Founder: Fragmentation "an Overblown Issue"
curtwoodward writes "Sure, developers might pull their hair out trying to keep track of all the versions of the Android operating system scattered across hundreds of millions of mobile devices worldwide. But a co-founder of Android says the OS's fragmentation problem is being blown out of proportion. At an event this week in Boston, Rich Miner — now a partner at Google Ventures — said some level of fragmentation is inevitable with Android's reach and the number of partners in the ecosystem. But things are getting better, he said, and in any case most consumers don't notice the difference: `This is a bit of an overblown issue, frankly.'"
He never said it wasn't a problem. He simply stated it was overblown - ie, it's an issue, but not as big an issue as people (read: Apple and Microsoft) are making it out to be.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/195310/Video_iOS_Android_myths_dispelled.php Here is a post mortem from a game developer who released two mobile games on iOS and Android. He briefly explains that both of the games ran perfectly fine on all but 3 devices. They weren't targeting a specific version of Android. They're supported devices were over 1900 devices for each game. So the fragmentation isn't as big of an issue as Apple likes to talk it up to being. And after the T-Mobile announcement today the fragmentation should only get better from here.
Thing is, he's not wrong. Most consumers won't notice.
I certainly noticed when Google Chrome would not install on my android 2.3 phone, which LG refuse to provide any further updates for.
In fact Google seem to be the most inclined to produce apps which will only run on the latest version of android and bugger anybody who hasn't thrown out last years tech and bought something new.
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
Your mistake was expecting a relatively young OS to provide you with a codec that could do some pretty unusual stuff. You could bundle your own codec, Android supports native code for performance.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC