Write your app for iOS. And sell it for $100 if you want. I don't care, because I won't buy it. I am sure that there are free alternatives that are just as good anyway.
And this lack of willingess of Android users to buy apps is the reason why most app developers make iOS their primary or only mobile OS target.
And the idea that free apps tend to be just as good as paid for apps just isn't born out by reality. There are categories of apps where they can be free because a developer earns their money via a different model. But one way or another dedicated developers and designers need to put a roof over their head, and that means making money. People who do it "just for fun" or "to scratch their own itch" stop developing and supporting as soon as the fun wears off or the itch has been scratched.
What is irrelevant, from a user perspective, is the amount of profit that a company makes.
Try telling that to the early purchasers of a HP TouchPad or a Microsoft Kin who found out within a few weeks that the product was discontinued due to a lack of sales. No software updates or app support for them.
Now you seem to be assuming that making the most money is a result of overcharging the most. If it was that easy every company would do it. No, the reason for making the most money is economies of scale on making a single, very popular, product line.
There have been more Java developers than Objective-C developers since the 1990s. However platforms are more than just languages, and there have always been more iOS developers than Android developers, and there still is. And mobile apps still usually come to iOS first, and often don't get released on Android at all.
Why? Mainly because more iOS apps are sold than Android apps, so there's ore money to be made.
But also because iOS is a lot less hassle to develop for - it doesn't have the fragmentation problem of Android. With iOS there one single track of OS software releases. And there's one phone and one tablet released about every year to 18 months. With Android there's new devices and OS variants that might break your apps every week.
The irony is that while more people prefer android to iOS
More people don't "prefer" Android. Most people have never heard of Android. Android just happens to ship on a lot of different mobile phones.. Whilst iOS only ships on one series.
And the reason Apple is making more money have more to do with the economies of scale of selling just one series of phone rather than around 50 as for example Samsung does.
If Apple's user experience was that much better, and specs didn't matter anymore, then why isn't Apple winning the phone race too?
It is. iPhone is the best selling smartphone in the world. The only way you can beat that is by adding together the sales of lots of different Android phones.
Note the differences. On iPhone you elect to use it or not during setup of a new device. And at any point after that you can switch it off in preferences. It's also not a key-logger.
On Android, you don't elect to use it. You can't switch it off. And it logs keystrokes.
The major criticism of wrong doing is the key-logging. There doesn't seem to be any reasonable criticism of what's happening on iPhone here. Only Android.
In general software patents are not accepted in Europe. Yet there are plenty of European software companies.
In general the software companies in Europe prefer it this way. There's no way you can do an exhaustive search for patents on every feature and algorithm that gets included in code. And they can do without the risk of being sued for shipping a product.
The companies in favour of software patents are very large, and mostly American. They've got used to winning legal games through through having more money to throw at litigation. And they'd like to play those games elsewhere in the world too.
The situation might be different with drugs or manufacturing, or whatever. But lets not assume that patents are needed when we can point to an area where they are more of a hindrance than a help to innovation.
Spare me the rhetoric. There is no shame in trying to earn money.
That rather depends on how you earn it.
Some ways are noble. Some ways are shameful. Some ways are criminal. And every shade of the spectrum between those.
And the idea that giving money to charity is a way of making it OK to have earned that money in a shameful way is pathetic. Pathetic but common amongst the morally vacuous rich.
There are certainly plenty of moral dilemmas in the pricing of drugs. Research spending has to be recouped, and profits have to be made. Yet maximising profits, by high prices on monopoly drugs, resulting in preventable deaths, is evil.
I'm just curious. Where is it illegal to have weapons on a civil vessel?
For example Egypt. Which means you can't have armed guards on vessels going through the Suez canal. Which makes things more difficult. I guess the armed guards would have to rendezvous with ships after they've been through Suez and left Egyptian territorial waters.
By the way, I don't think the fact that safety equipment could be used in extremis, at very short range as a firearm, is a reason to sanction real firearms. Better to do rational pros/cons analysis of the policy than fall into something with a thin-end-of-the-wedge argument.
The real issue is that there is no way to tell a "pirate ship" from thousands of fishing vessels in the waters until you step aboard and check it for weapons.
I bet if the position of each one was constantly tracked, and their positions, tracks and speeds were subjected to some analysis, then the pirates would look different. The fishermen will be going at an economical pace from fishing opportunity to fishing opportunity. The pirates will probably be heading more for shipping lanes, hanging about, going in for closer looks at ships etc.
Of course if this tactic is ever used, then they'd want to keep it secret. Don't want those pirates to become too good at pretending to be fishermen.
Incidentally the reason I thought of it is a recent TV science program which showed research on tracking mobile phones in a city, and how people show themselves to belong to various groups that visit the same groups of locations, and how different groups were at risk from different diseases. Thus analysis of mobile phone location data can suggest risk of diabetes, heart disease etc. (A Brave New World, Kathy Sykes)
Anyway, you then go on to say that you do know what KGaA is, which kind of contradicts your argument that the company is not called just "Merck". Unless you are trying to say that "Nike" is not just "Nike", but "Nike, Inc.", etc which also does not follow the logic that you dropped the "Inc" from the other company just because somebody else dropped it first.
I suggest you re-read my post, as I explained this.
And of course the "proper" version of English is that spoken in England. And no, it's not usually called "British English", unless you get your knowledge from localisation settings in American operating systems.
That said, there is nothing wrong with using American spellings, and I often do myself when communicating with a mostly American audience. I was just parodying the ridiculousness of your parochial complaint.
just because in your narrow worldview you recognize the former and not the latter.
Talking of narrow world view... I'm European, not American as you assume. So who exactly is the one taking the "narrow wold view" here?
I'm well aware that KGaA is a description of a company type, just as for example AG, Inc, Ltd and PLC are. I'm also aware that the full names of companies do include them.
The only reason I didn't use "Inc." for the American company is that yesterday's Slashdot summary didn't. No more, no less. Take the chip off your shoulder - it's making you think people have an American bias when they are not even American.
By the way, "recognize" is an American spelling not an English one. The English spelling is "recognise". You might ant to change that if you don't want to receive similarly narrow-minded accusations of bias yourself.
Neither of the Merck companies bought it, so it belongs to FaceBook. And the terms&conditions when registering the name includes provisions for not infringing others trademarks, and for Facebook to take back the URL for breaching the T&Cs.
Facebook is doing the sensible thing here. The company names are distinguishable - Merck KGaA and Merck and Co. Given that neither is called just "Merck", it makes sense to make them use distinguishable pages, probably with their full company name.
Better yet is if Facebook could put a page at FaceBook/Merck with links to both companies new vanity URLs.
Slashdot Mirror
Write your app for iOS. And sell it for $100 if you want. I don't care, because I won't buy it. I am sure that there are free alternatives that are just as good anyway.
And this lack of willingess of Android users to buy apps is the reason why most app developers make iOS their primary or only mobile OS target.
And the idea that free apps tend to be just as good as paid for apps just isn't born out by reality. There are categories of apps where they can be free because a developer earns their money via a different model. But one way or another dedicated developers and designers need to put a roof over their head, and that means making money. People who do it "just for fun" or "to scratch their own itch" stop developing and supporting as soon as the fun wears off or the itch has been scratched.
What is irrelevant, from a user perspective, is the amount of profit that a company makes.
Try telling that to the early purchasers of a HP TouchPad or a Microsoft Kin who found out within a few weeks that the product was discontinued due to a lack of sales. No software updates or app support for them.
Now you seem to be assuming that making the most money is a result of overcharging the most. If it was that easy every company would do it. No, the reason for making the most money is economies of scale on making a single, very popular, product line.
iPhone is still the most popular smartphone though. Samsung's share is made up of many different product lines.
There have been more Java developers than Objective-C developers since the 1990s. However platforms are more than just languages, and there have always been more iOS developers than Android developers, and there still is. And mobile apps still usually come to iOS first, and often don't get released on Android at all.
Why? Mainly because more iOS apps are sold than Android apps, so there's ore money to be made.
But also because iOS is a lot less hassle to develop for - it doesn't have the fragmentation problem of Android. With iOS there one single track of OS software releases. And there's one phone and one tablet released about every year to 18 months. With Android there's new devices and OS variants that might break your apps every week.
As a customer, choice is good.
As a consumer, some choice is good. Lots of choice is bad.
The irony is that while more people prefer android to iOS
More people don't "prefer" Android. Most people have never heard of Android. Android just happens to ship on a lot of different mobile phones.. Whilst iOS only ships on one series.
And the reason Apple is making more money have more to do with the economies of scale of selling just one series of phone rather than around 50 as for example Samsung does.
If Apple's user experience was that much better, and specs didn't matter anymore, then why isn't Apple winning the phone race too?
It is. iPhone is the best selling smartphone in the world. The only way you can beat that is by adding together the sales of lots of different Android phones.
Its hard to see how not having it installed is in any practical way better than just having it switched off.
However there is a bigger flaw in your category of argument:
Whenever there is a positive feature, the Android fans say "Ah, but you can get it in Model X." or "It''s higher spec in Model X".
Whenever there is a negative, the Android fans say "Ah, but you can get Model Y which doesn't have that".
The flaw is that that people buy on multiple criteria, and there will inevitably not be a single Android model that fulfils all these good attributes.
As always one buys a compromise. And iPhone is a particularly good compromise for many people.
Note the differences. On iPhone you elect to use it or not during setup of a new device. And at any point after that you can switch it off in preferences. It's also not a key-logger.
On Android, you don't elect to use it. You can't switch it off. And it logs keystrokes.
The major criticism of wrong doing is the key-logging. There doesn't seem to be any reasonable criticism of what's happening on iPhone here. Only Android.
In general software patents are not accepted in Europe. Yet there are plenty of European software companies.
In general the software companies in Europe prefer it this way. There's no way you can do an exhaustive search for patents on every feature and algorithm that gets included in code. And they can do without the risk of being sued for shipping a product.
The companies in favour of software patents are very large, and mostly American. They've got used to winning legal games through through having more money to throw at litigation. And they'd like to play those games elsewhere in the world too.
The situation might be different with drugs or manufacturing, or whatever. But lets not assume that patents are needed when we can point to an area where they are more of a hindrance than a help to innovation.
Don't be an asshole. You didn't provide any citations for your alternative version of events either.
Spare me the rhetoric. There is no shame in trying to earn money.
That rather depends on how you earn it.
Some ways are noble. Some ways are shameful. Some ways are criminal. And every shade of the spectrum between those.
And the idea that giving money to charity is a way of making it OK to have earned that money in a shameful way is pathetic. Pathetic but common amongst the morally vacuous rich.
There are certainly plenty of moral dilemmas in the pricing of drugs. Research spending has to be recouped, and profits have to be made. Yet maximising profits, by high prices on monopoly drugs, resulting in preventable deaths, is evil.
I'm just curious. Where is it illegal to have weapons on a civil vessel?
For example Egypt. Which means you can't have armed guards on vessels going through the Suez canal. Which makes things more difficult. I guess the armed guards would have to rendezvous with ships after they've been through Suez and left Egyptian territorial waters.
By the way, I don't think the fact that safety equipment could be used in extremis, at very short range as a firearm, is a reason to sanction real firearms. Better to do rational pros/cons analysis of the policy than fall into something with a thin-end-of-the-wedge argument.
The real issue is that there is no way to tell a "pirate ship" from thousands of fishing vessels in the waters until you step aboard and check it for weapons.
I bet if the position of each one was constantly tracked, and their positions, tracks and speeds were subjected to some analysis, then the pirates would look different. The fishermen will be going at an economical pace from fishing opportunity to fishing opportunity. The pirates will probably be heading more for shipping lanes, hanging about, going in for closer looks at ships etc.
Of course if this tactic is ever used, then they'd want to keep it secret. Don't want those pirates to become too good at pretending to be fishermen.
Incidentally the reason I thought of it is a recent TV science program which showed research on tracking mobile phones in a city, and how people show themselves to belong to various groups that visit the same groups of locations, and how different groups were at risk from different diseases. Thus analysis of mobile phone location data can suggest risk of diabetes, heart disease etc. (A Brave New World, Kathy Sykes)
They're not doing it on iPhones.
I guess you didn't RTFA. This very story is about software built into Android phones that does key logging as well as lots of other logging.
Carriers can't install software on iPhones. So your argument isn't valid.
Sure you can avoid it. Carriers can't add software to the iPhone.
I don't think you understand how tight some of those jeans were: they would still be a problem if worn today.
How did you come to that conclusion? I was there. I wore them.
Fortunately in the meantime all those boomers got fat so now everything is "relaxed fit" and size-inflated for safety.
Sadly, I can verify that too.
Anyway, you then go on to say that you do know what KGaA is, which kind of contradicts your argument that the company is not called just "Merck". Unless you are trying to say that "Nike" is not just "Nike", but "Nike, Inc.", etc which also does not follow the logic that you dropped the "Inc" from the other company just because somebody else dropped it first.
I suggest you re-read my post, as I explained this.
And of course the "proper" version of English is that spoken in England. And no, it's not usually called "British English", unless you get your knowledge from localisation settings in American operating systems.
That said, there is nothing wrong with using American spellings, and I often do myself when communicating with a mostly American audience. I was just parodying the ridiculousness of your parochial complaint.
just because in your narrow worldview you recognize the former and not the latter.
Talking of narrow world view... I'm European, not American as you assume. So who exactly is the one taking the "narrow wold view" here?
I'm well aware that KGaA is a description of a company type, just as for example AG, Inc, Ltd and PLC are. I'm also aware that the full names of companies do include them.
The only reason I didn't use "Inc." for the American company is that yesterday's Slashdot summary didn't. No more, no less. Take the chip off your shoulder - it's making you think people have an American bias when they are not even American.
By the way, "recognize" is an American spelling not an English one. The English spelling is "recognise". You might ant to change that if you don't want to receive similarly narrow-minded accusations of bias yourself.
Neither of the Merck companies bought it, so it belongs to FaceBook. And the terms&conditions when registering the name includes provisions for not infringing others trademarks, and for Facebook to take back the URL for breaching the T&Cs.
Facebook is doing the sensible thing here. The company names are distinguishable - Merck KGaA and Merck and Co. Given that neither is called just "Merck", it makes sense to make them use distinguishable pages, probably with their full company name.
Better yet is if Facebook could put a page at FaceBook/Merck with links to both companies new vanity URLs.
Back in the 1970s tight underpants and tight jeans used to be the big threat to male fertility. Health scares move with the times.
But I don't want any of that. I'd rather just sing!
How so? ...The scheme doesn't make sense now or later.
That's how. People who are against doing something, given the option of now or later always vote for later. In the hope that later never arrives.
Someone who doesn't recognise the worth of a project therefore isn't qualified to opine on it's timing. The answer "later" is a foregone conclusion.