Why would someone say up the night developing for a platform that is a PITA when they can go and develop painfully for "the King" ? (be it iOS or Android, whatever)
I would rather focus on making my app great rather than wasting time dealing with a hideous development environment.
Moreover, the author not just complains about time. Its about money, too: "I do, however, notice that although it is currently free to register with App World, in the future there will be a $200 USD charge. Now just in case you’ve never looked in to competing developer programs, Apple charges $99, and Google charges $25. Considering you are by far the underdog in this game, how do you justify charging double the price of the market leader? Also, with the $99 or $25 charge, Apple and Google let you publish and unlimited number of apps on their stores. You, on the other hand, have decided that for $200, a developer should only get to publish 10 apps, and it will cost $200 for every additional 10 apps"
"Update: It should be noted that I was using the WebWorks SDK and not the AIR SDK. A commenter on HN mentioned that if you’re using Adobe Builder, it will eventually get you to a Build and Run button, but that they experienced similar problems as well"
Eventually sounds somewhat amiguous.... IMHO, if the setup takes 20min more than on other platforms I don't think thats a big deal, as long as its simple enough during development.
"First up, I have to put the simulator into development mode, which makes total sense because of those times when you don’t want to use the simulator for development."
I really hope RIM doesn't consider that dev environment to be anywhere near final. Or wait. Maybe they just want to encourage devs to write Android apps and use them on the Playbook? Yeah, given how messed up the process is, and how critical it is for a platform starting at 0 native apps to start ramping up available 3rd party apps, I am going to assume they just don't wanna have you write playbook apps, they just want you to write Android apps! (assuming they are really compatible)
Wow, I already knew about that 2D car experiment but just re-discovered it with a far more interactive design, thanks!
Someone should make an app for that (not kidding) that lets you be the designer of a car and makes your car compete against other user's designs, producing an online top ranking, friends ranking (you have been ousted!), etc... Maybe there is even something more sophisticated than building 2D cars that would make a great game... (Yes i know the website lets you design a car, thats where I got my idea from, but it won't compete against others & no rankings)
This is one of those projects where the "Wish I had more free time"-thought comes to mind:-( Anyone? =D
You are right, but they also have Growl notifications which are great for OSX, but maybe opted not to as well. Why they would do that instead of replacing those very annoying popups, however, is beyond my mind...
I just doubt they bothered to try hard enough, I find the current implementation of multitasking not as good as on other platforms.
I don't think compositing+expose makes any sense (yet) for phones and tablets. Since that would require true multitasking, and current platforms don't really follow that opened/closed paradigm. However, they could have displayed a shot of how the app looked like at the precise time the user switched away from it. (Honeycomb does precisely that, looks much better than the approach in previous android versions and iOS, if you ask me)
Read my post. You also have "fragments"/columns, apps are great. Thats one of the minor differences between iOS for iphone and ipad. I was not talking about apps, but more about the OS. Springboard IS. EXACTLY. THE SAME. The fact that they did not redesign notifications (or rather, design them), multitasking, etc.. is inexcusable. Please have a look at other OSs, you will notice the difference immediatelly.
This is nothing new (the part about no user intervention), its called C2DM. Your google account would need to be compromised for an attacker to remotely install software on your phone.
IMHO this sounds like the old convenience vs security debacle. I prefer convenience in this case, since if someone compromises my goog account, I have much more important things to worry about. (like services trusting the ownership of my email account, private information, etc..)
"As a minimum, a dialog should be displayed on the receiving device so that the user must personally accept the application that is being installed." Again, I don't agree. I don't care about that, I want CONVENIENCE. However, the point that he makes that your compromised account is now more valuable is still valid. I just don't agree on the solution. Why not just opt out of remote phone installs? At least make the user validation of remote installs optional, for the ones who are more concerned about that?
iOS has not been optimized for tablets, only apps can make use of columns and similar layouts(and by the way, those ipad apps DONT work on iOS, or have you seen any column-divided app for the iphone?), the OS itself (notifications, multitasking, etc.) doesn't really make good use of the extra screen space. Please have a look at the xoom demos. Done? Yes, now you can start wishing apple had done those kind of improvements like better notifications and expose-like UI for multitasking for the ipad as well.
Do you REALLY expect apps that are designed for big screens to make it to the smaller screens? I don't.
"certain features that are present on Honeycomb will become available over time on Android smartphones" - so what's the big deal? Even the ipad (btw, I own one and I like it very much in spite of my rants) got the *exact* same multitasking capabilities and UI about 6 months later than the iphone.
Of course it doesn't, and I'm glad it won't. The UI has been adapted for big screens!
Notifications, fragments, new homescreen layout that makes better use of the extra screen space are only some of the specific changes for tablets. I hope everyone agrees that those changes don't make any sense for smartphones with smaller screens.
Note that they mention that new honeycomb features WILL make it to smartphones. So what's the news?
Some of those criticizing that Honeycomb won't make it as-is to smartphones probably only have dealt with iOS and the iPad. I have one and its a complete copy paste of the iphone, a big iphone for better and for worse. Don't get me wrong, I truly love my ipad. You also have "fragments"/columns, apps are great. But the OS itself has clearly NOT been adapted for tablets. It works quite well, but iOS for iPad doesnt make good use of the extra screen space for multitasking. Displaying app icons instead of an expose-like UI? POPUP notifications? come on!! News like this sound like people would want the same for android. Not for me, please!
I like to keep them in picasa. I trust the cloud (especially for a company like google) much more than my own management of a couple hard drives. Plus, I like the service (its interface, being able to download the original, easy sharing, transparent sync to my phone, etc..). The big downside is not being able to download entire albums in one download (maybe there are 3rd party apps that do that), and the fact that you can't upload videos unless you are using the windows client (I usually just use the web).
Let me briefly explain what the current situation in Spain is and why it drives me nuts.
Over here in Spain all ebooks are sold and advertised as ePUB, until you notize its not really ePub, but Adobe DRMed ePUB. I think Barnes&Noble does the same. And there are lots of other platforms that use Adobe DRM to encrypt their PDF files.
It drives me nuts that adobe has such a high penetration in the ebook DRM market because they don't have tools for most platforms. AFAIK no official readers exist for any platform beyond Windows or Mac, which is great (sarcasm) given how many portable platforms exist nowadays (Symbian, BlackBerry, Android, iOS)
What good is using ePub if you are going to encrypt it in a proprietary format? I don't know why they took the time to advertise it in PDF and ePub (the two "biggest" and most popular cross platform formats) if they are going to screw everything up by turning it into a proprietary file.
I for one will avoid DRM ebooks, and like with movies and music, will just buy it from places where there is no DRM. If no such places exist then they have already lost because I'll just look through the net for hacked.epubs, simple as that. And if that happens too often I will just stop looking for legitimate ebook shops and start downloading everything. Maybe some people don't agree morally, but I am okay with it, and reality is most people will do the same...
I should mention that over here in Spain, amazon does not offer any spanish ebooks, same goes for the iBooks store and google books, all books are sold as a DRMed download and you need to register at Adobe Digital Editions, then register AGAIN at the online store where you are buying your books at (there is no "central store" like amazon.com, they tried to replicate the physical stores fragmentation to the online world), then validate your content with your device - granted thats even possible - its not possible for any android device for example, and THEN you are able to read your book, if you are lucky
It just amazes me how an industry that has been able to learn from the music industry and then the movies industry is so slow at adopting what consumers want.
Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, the ipad was meant to be a laptop replacement (and for portable-mobile usage), in part because most of the stuff she does, its done more comfortable with the ipad. And the stuff the ipad doesn't do she usually doesn't do as well:) She was mostly using her iphone as her main device anyways since its usually more convenient than having to boot up and use a traditional windows laptop.
Unfortunately the ipad still is very PC and iTunes-dependent because of syncing and stuff like this. But I am glad to hear about Air Video, thanks!
No, just because the iPad doesn't play most of the video files she would want to see.
And yes, some of them are torrented or stem from megaupload, because most of them are not available through any other means. (i won't get into a moral debate as to whether this is "correct" or not)
exactly right, I said 99% of her video files because 99% of the files she wants to download or transfer from another device just don't work unless you use something like VLC
You are very wrong IMHO, my non-geek mother now can't view 99% of her video files, and lots of other users will have to go through a very painful process of re-encoding their videos (which can take a lot of time and cpu resources better spent on their casual tasks).
Maybe thats the case with iOS devices, but you can pretty much integrate your own accounts and cloud-based services on Android devices. I really like that about Android's API:)
Does it really matter if amazon.com goes down? Resources cost money, and if they succeeded in wasting a significant part of them (putting extra load on their servers) even if amazon stayed online... it might have been partially "successful".
Ok, so that shot shows us how the +1 button looks like... but for me the interesting part would be: what would happen when you click that button? is it a new google site? does it get published to your facebook/twitter/whatever profile? or that just part of google news?
also, that techcrunch article was from the 7. dec;)
It's not like they would lose control over Android itself, since they are the primary developers. But I agree that its possible for them to lose control over the cashflow that Android generates, which is quite a different thing.
But this raises an interesting question. Google was surely aware of such a risk when they decided to open source such a high valued piece of software. They had to decide between giving away freedom and having an easier way for "android everywhere" (so they can flood the market with android), or have total control over the platform and do it in a more WP7-way. So why did they go with the first approach? How will they keep earning money off it if its open?
IMHO the answer is that it doesn't matter (to some extent) if the operating system is free or not. One of the things that make android so attractive (in terms of features) is google's services: Contact sync, app sync, android market, google voice, voice search, voice actions, google navigation, GMail and more cloud services which are to come.
Someone can "take" google's efforts - that means take the Android Open Source Project - and turn it into a phone with bing. Or yahoo maps, etc.. But they would need to compete with google in all fronts, with all its cloud services, etc.. Plus there are lots of apps which already work with google-propietary services like Google Appengine, Google Maps, etc... they are gaining lots of new users which are going mobile and using those services more and more. And its becoming more difficult for competitors to make a competing product because they can not only take Android and put bing search on it, they have to compete with Google in ALL fronts to make it really competent.
(of course thats my own opinion and view in all this, and all in all I like that android itself can bring competition within its own platform in the cloud level, which makes everything much more exciting for me as a user/consumer. I don't know if google really wanted to give away android for "the benefit of us all" but they could end up competing on their own platform as a result of it, and I think thats good)
PD: another interesting matter is what would happen if someone would make an android version that runs apps that aren't compatible with other android versions because they don't fulfill the OHA criteria and/or tests. In that instance I'd say that isn't Android anymore and could not be regarded as such, even if it was a fork of it
Actually, the first generation iphones are much faster than most of those first-gen android phones (not just because of raw CPU where they are more or less equal)
But you are right about the G2, thats very strange.
"What makes google's own web pages automatically more relevant than any other web pages?"
Thats the point, those are NOT google's web pages! Its information which as been inlined that does NOT contain cached web pages (like regular search results), much less google's cached pages or google-specific services. (since when does google offer cinema ticketing?)
Slashdot Mirror
Why would someone say up the night developing for a platform that is a PITA when they can go and develop painfully for "the King" ? (be it iOS or Android, whatever)
I would rather focus on making my app great rather than wasting time dealing with a hideous development environment.
Moreover, the author not just complains about time. Its about money, too:
"I do, however, notice that although it is currently free to register with App World, in the future there will be a $200 USD charge. Now just in case you’ve never looked in to competing developer programs, Apple charges $99, and Google charges $25. Considering you are by far the underdog in this game, how do you justify charging double the price of the market leader? Also, with the $99 or $25 charge, Apple and Google let you publish and unlimited number of apps on their stores. You, on the other hand, have decided that for $200, a developer should only get to publish 10 apps, and it will cost $200 for every additional 10 apps"
"Update: It should be noted that I was using the WebWorks SDK and not the AIR SDK. A commenter on HN mentioned that if you’re using Adobe Builder, it will eventually get you to a Build and Run button, but that they experienced similar problems as well"
Eventually sounds somewhat amiguous.... IMHO, if the setup takes 20min more than on other platforms I don't think thats a big deal, as long as its simple enough during development.
"First up, I have to put the simulator into development mode, which makes total sense because of those times when you don’t want to use the simulator for development."
I really hope RIM doesn't consider that dev environment to be anywhere near final. Or wait. Maybe they just want to encourage devs to write Android apps and use them on the Playbook?
Yeah, given how messed up the process is, and how critical it is for a platform starting at 0 native apps to start ramping up available 3rd party apps, I am going to assume they just don't wanna have you write playbook apps, they just want you to write Android apps! (assuming they are really compatible)
Who is this MPAA comedian guy again?
Wow, I already knew about that 2D car experiment but just re-discovered it with a far more interactive design, thanks!
Someone should make an app for that (not kidding) that lets you be the designer of a car and makes your car compete against other user's designs, producing an online top ranking, friends ranking (you have been ousted!), etc... Maybe there is even something more sophisticated than building 2D cars that would make a great game...
(Yes i know the website lets you design a car, thats where I got my idea from, but it won't compete against others & no rankings)
This is one of those projects where the "Wish I had more free time"-thought comes to mind :-(
Anyone? =D
You are right, but they also have Growl notifications which are great for OSX, but maybe opted not to as well.
Why they would do that instead of replacing those very annoying popups, however, is beyond my mind...
I just doubt they bothered to try hard enough, I find the current implementation of multitasking not as good as on other platforms.
I don't think compositing+expose makes any sense (yet) for phones and tablets. Since that would require true multitasking, and current platforms don't really follow that opened/closed paradigm. However, they could have displayed a shot of how the app looked like at the precise time the user switched away from it. (Honeycomb does precisely that, looks much better than the approach in previous android versions and iOS, if you ask me)
Read my post. You also have "fragments"/columns, apps are great. Thats one of the minor differences between iOS for iphone and ipad. I was not talking about apps, but more about the OS. Springboard IS. EXACTLY. THE SAME.
The fact that they did not redesign notifications (or rather, design them), multitasking, etc.. is inexcusable.
Please have a look at other OSs, you will notice the difference immediatelly.
This is nothing new (the part about no user intervention), its called C2DM. Your google account would need to be compromised for an attacker to remotely install software on your phone.
IMHO this sounds like the old convenience vs security debacle. I prefer convenience in this case, since if someone compromises my goog account, I have much more important things to worry about. (like services trusting the ownership of my email account, private information, etc..)
"As a minimum, a dialog should be displayed on the receiving device so that the user must personally accept the application that is being installed."
Again, I don't agree. I don't care about that, I want CONVENIENCE. However, the point that he makes that your compromised account is now more valuable is still valid. I just don't agree on the solution.
Why not just opt out of remote phone installs? At least make the user validation of remote installs optional, for the ones who are more concerned about that?
iOS has not been optimized for tablets, only apps can make use of columns and similar layouts(and by the way, those ipad apps DONT work on iOS, or have you seen any column-divided app for the iphone?), the OS itself (notifications, multitasking, etc.) doesn't really make good use of the extra screen space.
Please have a look at the xoom demos. Done? Yes, now you can start wishing apple had done those kind of improvements like better notifications and expose-like UI for multitasking for the ipad as well.
Do you REALLY expect apps that are designed for big screens to make it to the smaller screens? I don't.
"certain features that are present on Honeycomb will become available over time on Android smartphones" - so what's the big deal? Even the ipad (btw, I own one and I like it very much in spite of my rants) got the *exact* same multitasking capabilities and UI about 6 months later than the iphone.
Of course it doesn't, and I'm glad it won't. The UI has been adapted for big screens!
Notifications, fragments, new homescreen layout that makes better use of the extra screen space are only some of the specific changes for tablets. I hope everyone agrees that those changes don't make any sense for smartphones with smaller screens.
Note that they mention that new honeycomb features WILL make it to smartphones. So what's the news?
Some of those criticizing that Honeycomb won't make it as-is to smartphones probably only have dealt with iOS and the iPad. I have one and its a complete copy paste of the iphone, a big iphone for better and for worse. Don't get me wrong, I truly love my ipad.
You also have "fragments"/columns, apps are great. But the OS itself has clearly NOT been adapted for tablets. It works quite well, but iOS for iPad doesnt make good use of the extra screen space for multitasking. Displaying app icons instead of an expose-like UI? POPUP notifications? come on!! News like this sound like people would want the same for android.
Not for me, please!
I like to keep them in picasa. I trust the cloud (especially for a company like google) much more than my own management of a couple hard drives.
Plus, I like the service (its interface, being able to download the original, easy sharing, transparent sync to my phone, etc..).
The big downside is not being able to download entire albums in one download (maybe there are 3rd party apps that do that), and the fact that you can't upload videos unless you are using the windows client (I usually just use the web).
Let me briefly explain what the current situation in Spain is and why it drives me nuts.
Over here in Spain all ebooks are sold and advertised as ePUB, until you notize its not really ePub, but Adobe DRMed ePUB. I think Barnes&Noble does the same. And there are lots of other platforms that use Adobe DRM to encrypt their PDF files.
It drives me nuts that adobe has such a high penetration in the ebook DRM market because they don't have tools for most platforms. AFAIK no official readers exist for any platform beyond Windows or Mac, which is great (sarcasm) given how many portable platforms exist nowadays (Symbian, BlackBerry, Android, iOS)
What good is using ePub if you are going to encrypt it in a proprietary format? I don't know why they took the time to advertise it in PDF and ePub (the two "biggest" and most popular cross platform formats) if they are going to screw everything up by turning it into a proprietary file.
I for one will avoid DRM ebooks, and like with movies and music, will just buy it from places where there is no DRM. If no such places exist then they have already lost because I'll just look through the net for hacked .epubs, simple as that. And if that happens too often I will just stop looking for legitimate ebook shops and start downloading everything. Maybe some people don't agree morally, but I am okay with it, and reality is most people will do the same...
I should mention that over here in Spain, amazon does not offer any spanish ebooks, same goes for the iBooks store and google books, all books are sold as a DRMed download and you need to register at Adobe Digital Editions, then register AGAIN at the online store where you are buying your books at (there is no "central store" like amazon.com, they tried to replicate the physical stores fragmentation to the online world), then validate your content with your device - granted thats even possible - its not possible for any android device for example, and THEN you are able to read your book, if you are lucky
It just amazes me how an industry that has been able to learn from the music industry and then the movies industry is so slow at adopting what consumers want.
Just my 2c, :P
Thanks for the tip. :)
Unfortunately, the ipad was meant to be a laptop replacement (and for portable-mobile usage), in part because most of the stuff she does, its done more comfortable with the ipad.
And the stuff the ipad doesn't do she usually doesn't do as well
She was mostly using her iphone as her main device anyways since its usually more convenient than having to boot up and use a traditional windows laptop.
Unfortunately the ipad still is very PC and iTunes-dependent because of syncing and stuff like this. But I am glad to hear about Air Video, thanks!
theora? nope, I tend to avoid re-encoding video files, and don't usually encounter those in the net.
Most common video files are not supported by the ipad. AVI and MKV formats among others, Xvid and Divx codecs sound familiar? ;)
No, just because the iPad doesn't play most of the video files she would want to see.
And yes, some of them are torrented or stem from megaupload, because most of them are not available through any other means. (i won't get into a moral debate as to whether this is "correct" or not)
exactly right, I said 99% of her video files because 99% of the files she wants to download or transfer from another device just don't work unless you use something like VLC
You are very wrong IMHO, my non-geek mother now can't view 99% of her video files, and lots of other users will have to go through a very painful process of re-encoding their videos (which can take a lot of time and cpu resources better spent on their casual tasks).
Maybe thats the case with iOS devices, but you can pretty much integrate your own accounts and cloud-based services on Android devices. I really like that about Android's API :)
Does it really matter if amazon.com goes down? Resources cost money, and if they succeeded in wasting a significant part of them (putting extra load on their servers) even if amazon stayed online... it might have been partially "successful".
Ok, so that shot shows us how the +1 button looks like... but for me the interesting part would be: what would happen when you click that button? is it a new google site? does it get published to your facebook/twitter/whatever profile? or that just part of google news?
also, that techcrunch article was from the 7. dec ;)
Postdata. I keep forgetting that its "PS" when writing english. Another slashdotter already explained below :)
It's not like they would lose control over Android itself, since they are the primary developers. But I agree that its possible for them to lose control over the cashflow that Android generates, which is quite a different thing.
But this raises an interesting question. Google was surely aware of such a risk when they decided to open source such a high valued piece of software. They had to decide between giving away freedom and having an easier way for "android everywhere" (so they can flood the market with android), or have total control over the platform and do it in a more WP7-way. So why did they go with the first approach? How will they keep earning money off it if its open?
IMHO the answer is that it doesn't matter (to some extent) if the operating system is free or not. One of the things that make android so attractive (in terms of features) is google's services: Contact sync, app sync, android market, google voice, voice search, voice actions, google navigation, GMail and more cloud services which are to come.
Someone can "take" google's efforts - that means take the Android Open Source Project - and turn it into a phone with bing. Or yahoo maps, etc.. But they would need to compete with google in all fronts, with all its cloud services, etc.. Plus there are lots of apps which already work with google-propietary services like Google Appengine, Google Maps, etc... they are gaining lots of new users which are going mobile and using those services more and more. And its becoming more difficult for competitors to make a competing product because they can not only take Android and put bing search on it, they have to compete with Google in ALL fronts to make it really competent.
(of course thats my own opinion and view in all this, and all in all I like that android itself can bring competition within its own platform in the cloud level, which makes everything much more exciting for me as a user/consumer. I don't know if google really wanted to give away android for "the benefit of us all" but they could end up competing on their own platform as a result of it, and I think thats good)
PD: another interesting matter is what would happen if someone would make an android version that runs apps that aren't compatible with other android versions because they don't fulfill the OHA criteria and/or tests. In that instance I'd say that isn't Android anymore and could not be regarded as such, even if it was a fork of it
Actually, the first generation iphones are much faster than most of those first-gen android phones (not just because of raw CPU where they are more or less equal)
But you are right about the G2, thats very strange.
Mod parent up. This is a brilliant parody showing how stupid the article is. :)
"What makes google's own web pages automatically more relevant than any other web pages?"
Thats the point, those are NOT google's web pages! Its information which as been inlined that does NOT contain cached web pages (like regular search results), much less google's cached pages or google-specific services.
(since when does google offer cinema ticketing?)