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I just came from an iPhone to a Nexus One, and after browsing and downloading a lot of apps and games from the Android Market I've come to realize that the quality of iPhone games and apps is much better. Every Android game I've played has looked terrible and poorly made. It seems a lot more developers are putting more time and effort into iPhone apps. For example, The Sims 3 in the iPhone App Store is a really good game, with great graphics, yet the Android version looks terrible. Most iPhone apps I've seen have looked much nicer and more polished, too.
This is a pretty big dealbreaker, too. Will this situation ever change?
Agreed. I was hoping that now, being a year and a half after the first android device was released we would get some better applications. The ones for the iPhone just seem to be very polished. They look great and function great. Android will get there, its just going to take some time.
By the time Apple released the AppStore, how many iPhones did they have in circulation? A butt-ton (thats a lot!). Android is just getting into the lime light with the Droid and Nexus One. Apps will be coming shortly!
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I agree. Now that the device platform is getting more popular, there will be more interest in developing for Android.
The price of entry is very low for developers, so you will still end up with a lot of crap (just like the Playstation has.) The good thing about having kids using the SDK to make things on their own is that there's an affordance for anyone to develop something truly innovative instead of catering to the whims of the popular. Hopefully there will be fewer countdown timers to Paris Hilton's next new boyfriend and more games that are truly entertaining.
I never found the "average" quality of iPhone apps to be very high myself. I found plenty of excellent iPhone apps, both free and paid, but my normal app store experience would be to download ten apps and keep one. I'd say half the stuff I *bought* I wound up deleting.
The Android store seems to have the same problem, but there's plenty of great stuff out there. Games do seem to be a shortcoming relative to the iPhone though. Fortunately OpenSudoku and yongzh's console emulators are enough fun for me at the moment.
Have found quite a few Android titles that pretty much stomp anything I saw on the iPhone.... ConnectBot, Droid48 and RealCalc come to mind.
But I still miss Solebon Solitaire and X-Plane from the iPhone.
1. OpenGL2.0 graphics not supported on most android devices yet, so developers dont implement it into games (gives things like motionblur).
2. No multitouch on most phones
3. No market restrictions for developers uploading
4. Fewer developers.
There's a couple answers to this though too!
1 & 2: Android 2.0, and new android phones support opengl2.0 and multitouch, so it is only a matter of time before we see games using these. Polarbit already use multitouch on Toonwarz, and ratsquare use opengl2.0 in speedforge extreme (when it's released).
3 & 4: A lot of good stuff gets lost with all the junk uploaded by half-assed developers. There are some absolute gems though (search this forum, or the games forum) and more and more iphone developers are releasing for android too.
Android market is way newer than app store, but eventually you'll see games on par with iphone, perhaps by year end even there will be a much close correlation.
Give it time man, its in its infancy and with all the android phones coming to be the developers will follow, its the way of the almighty dollar. There are plenty of useful apps. Try Imusic on for size, it alone is worth running over an iphone 3GS with a lawn mower.
Also, I think until apps can be loaded and run from the sd card and not just from in the phones tiny memory, we will not see the high end graphics. i too came from Iphone and I am very disappointed by the app quality. most look like they were done by a kid in his bedroom or basement. Compare raging thunder to iphones need for speed shift. I was appalled at raging thunder quality.while most are quite functional, they look horrible.
Also, I think until apps can be loaded and run from the sd card and not just from in the phones tiny memory, we will not see the high end graphics. i too came from Iphone and I am very disappointed by the app quality. most look like they were done by a kid in his bedroom or basement. Compare raging thunder to iphones need for speed shift. I was appalled at raging thunder quality.while most are quite functional, they look horrible.
"Done by a kid in his bedroom or basement"
I'd like to see you do better...
"I was appalled at raging thunder quality"
appalled is quite a strong word... The point is Android games are getting better and the developers base is getting larger. In a few years Android users will probably be "appalled" of the iphones quality
Say what you will about Apple but as I type on my laggy keyboard to post this at least it is standard across the board. There are what 3 or 4 versions of android os now.
Plus add in handset makers and all of their variances for hardware as well as software and add to the mix the carriers who decide if phones get these updates it can be daunting and frustrating. Especially coming from Apple world. Yes they lock down their system but all handsets including Ipods get the software updates regardless of the carrier,ATT in this case.
How Google could limit app size and quality as well useability on handsets by not having standards as well as not allowing apps to be run from the sdcard is beyond me.
My carrier is not supposed to get 2.1 until late June or July for gosh sakes. I was shocked to find out we cannot update when we want. What If my carrier, or any carrier decides to not bother with all the updates for all the different phones ?
Could very easily happen. I am not so sure these mobile carriers really want to be In the software end of this. Not for the long haul anyway and It will be at the expense of consumers who money up big bucks for these devices.
Apple got it right in a lot of ways, why change what works. I would like to see a desktop program a la itunes and upgrades come straight from google, not the carrier or handset maker.
Say what you will about Apple but as I type on my laggy keyboard to post this at least it is standard across the board. There are what 3 or 4 versions of android os now.
Plus add in handset makers and all of their variances for hardware as well as software and add to the mix the carriers who decide if phones get these updates it can be daunting and frustrating. Especially coming from Apple world. Yes they lock down their system but all handsets including Ipods get the software updates regardless of the carrier,ATT in this case.
How Google could limit app size and quality as well useability on handsets by not having standards as well as not allowing apps to be run from the sdcard is beyond me.
My carrier is not supposed to get 2.1 until late June or July for gosh sakes. I was shocked to find out we cannot update when we want. What If my carrier, or any carrier decides to not bother with all the updates for all the different phones ?
Could very easily happen. I am not so sure these mobile carriers really want to be In the software end of this. Not for the long haul anyway and It will be at the expense of consumers who money up big bucks for these devices.
Apple got it right in a lot of ways, why change what works. I would like to see a desktop program a la itunes and upgrades come straight from google, not the carrier or handset maker.
You took the words right out of my mouth. This is exactly how I feel. If someone were to combine Android's openness, the Nexus One's hardware, Apple's business model and the iPhone's OS we'd see an amazing phone. And I think we might see most of that with the iPhone 4.
You took the words right out of my mouth. This is exactly how I feel. If someone were to combine Android's openness, the Nexus One's hardware, Apple's business model and the iPhone's OS we'd see an amazing phone. And I think we might see most of that with the iPhone 4.
I think you'll see all that minus the openness in iPhone 4. But I still find that to be a non-starter for my own personal reasons.
As a developer, I'm terrified of the idea of spending months developing an application, only to be told that Apple will soon be coming out with something similar and thus I'm "duplicating existing functionality" of the iPhone. Or that AT&T doesn't like my app because someone could use too much bandwidth with it. I didn't bother implementing most every idea I thought up for an iPhone app because I figured it would probably run aground of Apple's approval process in one fashion or another.
I'm also now unwilling to use a device that doesn't support multitasking. It's nice to be able to go for a mountain bike ride, turn on Google Tracks to record the route, listen to music (possibly from the media player, or maybe Pandora) and then receive gtalk messages from friends about meeting for dinner later.
the only apps i want to use so far are from google. I got a ps3 when i want to play a game.
+1
I have a PC and PS3 for gaming. The games I have installed on my android are only meant to kill a few minutes here or there. If I want a hand held gaming unit I will buy a PSP.
While the iphone may have better games, you have to use ITunes... Which I loath which is a deal breaker for me.
I have a PC and PS3 for gaming. The games I have installed on my android are only meant to kill a few minutes here or there. If I want a hand held gaming unit I will buy a PSP.
While the iphone may have better games, you have to use ITunes... Which I loath which is a deal breaker for me.
I want games I can kill a few minutes on the Android. With the iPhone, if I was bored, I'd play Canabalt or Fieldrunners. I can't find a single fun game on the Android Market.
the only apps i want to use so far are from google. I got a ps3 when i want to play a game.
Do you bring your PS3 to work or school? When you go to a cafeteria or take a break? When you work on the road or out in the field? When you ride a bus or train? When you relax in a cafe or wait for a flight in an airport? When you wait for your order in a restaurant?
Last edited by ktchong; January 8th, 2010 at 09:16 PM.
Do you bring your PS3 to work or school? When you go to a cafeteria or take a break? When you work on the road or out in the field? When you ride a bus or train? When you relax in a cafe or wait for a flight in an airport? When you wait for your order in a restaurant?
No. Those are usually times I interact with other human beings.
I understand wanting to have something to pass the time, but im thinking more along the lines of a crossword puzzle. Not diablo III
Its certainly one of the pro's of the iphone and one of the cons of android for some but its not that important to me personally. I like to do social type of things with the phone.
Users must remember that Android is still in its infancy. The first year's worth of Iphone Apps were not exactly that numerous or stellar. However, there is some truth to the statement that the lowest bar of Android apps may be a bit lower. This is due to two reasons:
1. The fact that the initial barrier to entry to create an android app might be a bit easier (due to all of the released source and the free SDK)
2. The fact that it is more difficult to support such a varying range of hardware and software
Time will help all of this as developers pool their knowledge and experiences with some of the issues that are continually being encountered and tackled as new hardware and updates hit the market.
Another issue is the almighty dollar... Monetizing, AKA: getting paid what we deserve for our work, is also still difficult and a great unknown due to the risk of not knowing the size of the market and the long term future. It will take developers a while to flock to Android and spend all of their development time writing android code until they know that income is possible.
What we have quickly learned in our development process is that writing a GREAT app for Android is proving to be more difficult than most realize if one is trying to support ALL of the android devices across the board and the developers are dedicated to making it a high quality, well behaved, bug-free app. As more of the devices are upgraded to 2.0+ there will be a huge increase in the quality of the apps as well.
Case in point: We spent an entire morning today chasing down some issues with playing soundtracks and sound effects in 1.5. There are VERY small limits on the size of the sound pool in 1.5 and thus the way the soundtracks were coded and instantiated in the game had to be altered. The extra coding and sound editing would not have been an issue had the situation been better documented or not existed! :-) Luckily, issues like this will not exist in the future as the general android population progresses on to the bigger and better versions, documentation, exchange of information, etc.!
Essentially what will probably happen is that the phones that do not have dedicated graphics chips will not get the newest versions of android and thus be left behind. This is actually a good thing, because apple will at some point have to stop supporting their legacy devices to keep up - which will be a large chunk of their existing population, whereas android phones will be more of a gradual phasing out similar to the way computers (or their owners rather) are self selecting for obsolescence or new OS upgrades.
CONCLUSION: There are android app developers out there that are working very hard and are very close to releasing some HIGH quality impressive games. Just be patient. Our first app release will be early next week! It will have polished graphics, custom sounds, have all of the i's dotted and t's crossed, and will be well supported! It is all very exciting.
Aw shucks, my phone doesn't have great games! Better go complain! While I'm at it, I'll also complain that my PSP doesn't play blu-ray movies and my TiVo doesn't cook my dinner.
Oh, wait, I've got NESoid, SNESoid, Gameboid and Gensoid. I've got TOO MANY great games. I guess I can scratch that one off my list of "stuff to complain about."
Aw shucks, my phone doesn't have great games! Better go complain! While I'm at it, I'll also complain that my PSP doesn't play blu-ray movies and my TiVo doesn't cook my dinner.
Oh, wait, I've got NESoid, SNESoid, Gameboid and Gensoid. I've got TOO MANY great games. I guess I can scratch that one off my list of "stuff to complain about."
That's fantastic for you, but it's a bit of a problem for Nexus One owners with only one hardware button and no multitouch.
If I was a developer I don't know that I'd put a lot of energy into something if I knew my app had a low chance of being chosen...
Here's what I mean. We can download tons and tons of apps on the iphone/touch. There's at minimum 8gb of space, so it's nothing for someone to buy app after app after app, month after month after month. There's lots of money being thrown out in Apple's direction.
I've paid $1+ for apps I rarely ever use. They don't get deleted because I have enough space.
Now, as for Android... since you can't save to the SD card, I'm limited to downloading a very small number of apps. My money will go to just a few of the best apps. All of the others, THAT I WOULD HAVE PAID FOR and downloaded will not be purchased due to the incredibly limited space on the phone.
No. Those are usually times I interact with other human beings.
WHAT?! You can actually interact with others? OMG! I didn't know we could still do that!
Seriously, great point. Put down the phone once in a while and live your life.
I like the way Japan deals with it. Talk on your cell phone on the plane/train/bus/etc. and you will be told that it is rude and that you should have more respect for those around you. It doesn't hurt to say "Hello. How are you today?" to others, you know.
Aw shucks, my phone doesn't have great games! Better go complain! While I'm at it, I'll also complain that my PSP doesn't play blu-ray movies and my TiVo doesn't cook my dinner."
What do you have, an older Tivo, version 2? Version 3 DOES cook dinner.
Pete
I had my rant machine all fired up ready to rip ShotSkydiver a new one for posting a thread that we've covered a kajillion times on here.
Then I thought.. why? Someone else is just going to come along and whine about the same thing (again).
Round and round and round we go.
Sorry about that... I hate when people do that as well. I'm new to the forum, and while I know that's not an excuse, I didn't see an open thread about it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hrbib21
Perfect example of the instant gratification attitude of our populace. the phone JUST CAME OUT. Give it time.
I'm not complaining about not having it, I'm just saying that as of now Nexus One owners don't have the option to play emulators. Every time I've asked this question people have just told me to play emulators which I can't do and it's getting quite annoying.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lekky
Just to confirm, it DOES have multitouch capability.
Oh, I know, I just mean it hasn't been implemented yet.
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Multitouch has been implemented, you have to be careful how you phrase this ok. The apps that come with the phone do not have multitouch, that apps that you can download from the market DO have multitouch.
Multitouch has been implemented, you have to be careful how you phrase this ok. The apps that come with the phone do not have multitouch, that apps that you can download from the market DO have multitouch.
That's what I meant... it hasn't been implemented into the core apps yet.
Agreed. I was hoping that now, being a year and a half after the first android device was released we would get some better applications.
One factor that gets often overlooked. In America, at least, Android barely mattered until ~3 months ago, because prior to early October there was only one way to get an Android phone: switch to T-Mobile.
I know for a fact that Sprint has traditionally been popular among casual software developers... mainly, because they've usually had better phones (especially with regard to the first Palm phones circa 2001-3), data service, rates, and TOS than the others (Verizon=expensive control freak Nazis, AT&T's phones just plain sucked pre-GSM, and T-Mobile's data network was a cruel GPRS joke until very, VERY recently). 2 years ago at JavaOne, I'd conservatively estimate that *at least* half the guys there had Sprint logos on their phones.
More purely anecdotal evidence: check out the explosive growth of Android-related topics at xda-developers.com, and other sites like it, that have become de-facto "Android sites" over the past 2-3 months as practically their entire user base (admins and all) have jumped ship to Android as it became available from their carriers. Even moreso, when you look at the boards for the highest-end WM phones (like the Touch HD) and see that the #1 topics everyone cares about are the ones like "does (the guerrilla) Android (port) support ${bluetooth|gps|camera|etc} yet?"
Put another way, by next fall, the Android software situation is going to be a LOT more mature than it is now. And Microsoft will be filling its drawers when they throw the release party for WM7, and nobody really notices or cares.
Last edited by miamicanes; January 9th, 2010 at 07:57 PM.
One factor that gets often overlooked. In America, at least, Android barely mattered until ~3 months ago, because prior to early October there was only one way to get an Android phone: switch to T-Mobile.
I know for a fact that Sprint has traditionally been popular among casual software developers... mainly, because they've usually had better phones (especially with regard to the first Palm phones circa 2001-3), data service, rates, and TOS than the others (Verizon=expensive control freak Nazis, AT&T's phones just plain sucked pre-GSM, and T-Mobile's data network was a cruel GPRS joke until very, VERY recently). 2 years ago at JavaOne, I'd conservatively estimate that *at least* half the guys there had Sprint logos on their phones.
More purely anecdotal evidence: check out the explosive growth of Android-related topics at xda-developers.com, and other sites like it, that have become de-facto "Android sites" over the past 2-3 months as practically their entire user base (admins and all) have jumped ship to Android as it became available from their carriers. Even moreso, when you look at the boards for the highest-end WM phones (like the Touch HD) and see that the #1 topics everyone cares about are the ones like "does (the guerrilla) Android (port) support ${bluetooth|gps|camera|etc} yet?"
Put another way, by next fall, the Android software situation is going to be a LOT more mature than it is now. And Microsoft will be filling its drawers when they throw the release party for WM7, and nobody really notices or cares.
Well put.
100% of your statements are 110% agreed upon.
The palm treo movement was a nice ripple, the WinMO phones became a bigger splash, the iphone movement was a wave, and Android will be an all out Tsunami. Blackberry is very noteworthy, but kind of its own thing due to certain reasons.
What we have here is an operating system war similar to when Amiga, OS2, Microsoft, and Apple, etc. all battled it out back in the day. We all know now how that ended up! The current field is NOT that dissimilar.
Quality is improving on applications, so is number of Apps. One thing I'd like to see is better keyboard to incorporate multitouch into their 3rd party softkey. Also want to see a usable second life client where one can see where there at fly,move,chat. All I gotta say is Google keeps making android better
Yep... the Amiga's soul took over PCs (Comanche: Maximum Overkill was an Amiga game in PC drag), then MacOS secretly committed suicide & NeXTSTEP quietly assumed its public identity as OSX
Most people don't realize just how earth-shakingly disruptive and rule-changing the sudden influx of Amiga developers into the PC camp was.
Pre-'94, PC programming was dominated by people who grew up with the 8088, and treated the 80286 and 80386 like a faster version of it. They saw the world in terms of 64k segments with a 1-megabyte horizon. Amiga programmers might have spent their teens with a c64, but the moment they touched a 680x0, they ran with it and never looked back. Plus, DOS programmers viewed DOS as something holy and sacred. Amiga programmers, in contrast, had a long, proud tradition of chucking the OS and doing everything from scratch. So... when they were forced to start programming PCs, they picked up the 386 assembly language manual, realized it had perfectly good orthogonal registers & flat addressing (as long as you didn't care about DOS, tradition, or running on anything less than a 386SX), and proceeded to write games that literally leapfrogged a decade ahead of what the traditional PC developers were doing on the same hardware.
Last edited by miamicanes; January 9th, 2010 at 11:16 PM.
Well, I think another part of it was the fact that realmode PC assembly language was so brutally ugly and painful, high-level languages never developed the early stigma on PCs that they did on the Amiga. During the late Amiga Era, there were maybe a dozen people on earth writing stuff in 386enh assembly... and most of them worked for Intel, in research positions. Everyone else used Turbo[C(++)|Pascal]. In contrast, one of the worst insults Amiga programmers could throw at your program was to sneer and say, "ewww... what did you do, write it in C?"
Thus, when the Amiga refugees ended up writing PC apps, their first instinct was to make PCs look like Amigas from a programming point of view. The moment we discovered 386enh mode, the genie was out of the bottle, and we would have slept in a cardboard box in a park before we willingly used realmode for anything.
The big irony is that most of us Amiga refugees totally overlooked Linux at the time, even though (in retrospect) it already had the development tools and OS to handle 386enh code. The problem was, the only thing Amiga owners were more prejudiced against than Macs and PCs was... Unix. Not because of Unix per se, but just because back then, "Unix" was basically a synonym for "boring charactermode apps running on a green or orange VT100 terminal". If Linus Torvalds spent the summer after he got his first kernel to work writing a kick-ass 386enh assembly megademo for a PC with ET4000 videocard & SBpro to show off what his "Linux" environment could do, history might have turned out a bit differently.
Last edited by miamicanes; January 9th, 2010 at 11:54 PM.
Say what you will about Apple but as I type on my laggy keyboard to post this at least it is standard across the board. There are what 3 or 4 versions of android os now.
Plus add in handset makers and all of their variances for hardware as well as software and add to the mix the carriers who decide if phones get these updates it can be daunting and frustrating. Especially coming from Apple world. Yes they lock down their system but all handsets including Ipods get the software updates regardless of the carrier,ATT in this case.
How Google could limit app size and quality as well useability on handsets by not having standards as well as not allowing apps to be run from the sdcard is beyond me.
My carrier is not supposed to get 2.1 until late June or July for gosh sakes. I was shocked to find out we cannot update when we want. What If my carrier, or any carrier decides to not bother with all the updates for all the different phones ?
Could very easily happen. I am not so sure these mobile carriers really want to be In the software end of this. Not for the long haul anyway and It will be at the expense of consumers who money up big bucks for these devices.
Apple got it right in a lot of ways, why change what works. I would like to see a desktop program a la itunes and upgrades come straight from google, not the carrier or handset maker.
I would have to agree, It has been really tough switching from and iPhone to any other devise.
I bought an iPhone the day they cam out and switched before the 3Gs came out. I have had a Pre and a tour and now a hero.
Apple got it right in a lot of ways, why change what works. I would like to see a desktop program a la itunes and upgrades come straight from google, not the carrier or handset maker.
Agree, 100%. Google's NEXT big project needs to be figuring out how to abstract-out the way things like SenseUI and softkeys interface with the core OS, so they can take responsibility for core OS upgrades away from the carriers & handset makers.
Dell and HP might SAY you have to depend on them 100% for Windows upgrades, or claim Vista/Win7/Linux "isn't supported" for a specific model, but once you find out who made the peripheral chipsets, you can just go download the reference drivers from the chipset maker's website and upgrade to the next version of Windows on your own, Dell and HP be damned. Upgrades to your phoneOS should be the same way. If Sprint and/or HTC wants to make it user-friendly and easy to upgrade the OS, more power to them... but they shouldn't be allowed to stand in the way of users who'd rather upgrade early, often, and by themselves.
Using the Sprint Hero as an example, the biggest roadblock (besides the camera) has been SenseUI. HTC has it bolted onto Android so tightly, it's hard to cleanly remove it, and nearly impossible to tape it over a newer version of Android as a facade. Likewise, HTC's stupid keyguard is almost useless for people who like to carry their phones in a pocket, but it's impossible to selectively disable. There are a few programs that try, but because they're actively fighting with it to trick it into not working, the battery gets drained, and often the entire phone gets destabilized by the fight.
Android 3.x should have a clean, well-defined API for things like "desktop managers" (SenseUI)" and "keyguards/locks", to make it easy for companies like HTC to make a phone with something like SenseUI that isn't inextricably tied to a specific build of AndroidOS.
I just came from an iPhone to a Nexus One, and after browsing and downloading a lot of apps and games from the Android Market I've come to realize that the quality of iPhone games and apps is much better. Every Android game I've played has looked terrible and poorly made. It seems a lot more developers are putting more time and effort into iPhone apps. For example, The Sims 3 in the iPhone App Store is a really good game, with great graphics, yet the Android version looks terrible. Most iPhone apps I've seen have looked much nicer and more polished, too.
This is a pretty big dealbreaker, too. Will this situation ever change?
Keep in the mind the length of time the iPhone's been out and the Android phones have been out (keeps in mind the length of time the Android 2.0 phones have been out--which matters because these phones have higher specs which can support better apps) and I think you might just understand why the quality and quantity of apps differ so much.
Last edited by QrafTee; January 10th, 2010 at 03:26 PM.
I just came onto the Android platform after finally found a phone with a touch cap screen with a physical keyboard. I have to say, i am pretty disappointed so far. Before even talking about the total disparity in apps between apple and google, the touch interface is just not up to scratch (i am on the droid/milestone android 2.0). I mean, its google, not some 2nd rate OS company. They clearly know the competition and yet they managed to release such an inferior product.
Then the apps, lets not mention the difference in quality and quantity of the apps. I dont have a problem with this as i understand android is still 'young' but what about those which are available on both iphone and android? How is it possible the same app written by the same company handles so differently on 2 different OSs? My biggest annoyance is the difference between the facebook apps. I gave up with the android version after 2 days and just moved to the mobile browser version. The iphone one is awesome, so why the difference? Maybe Google should spend sometime defining some standards. Also i dont know if this is just me but the iPhone touch keyboard is also much more accurate for some reason . Also no pinch to zoom on maps? What's with that? Andy Rubin's answer for that was that he 'doesnt like 2-handed operation?'. Well there are plenty of us who do!
All in all i think android has great potential but it clearly lacks an edge. I mean i laughed when all the google ppl at CES were braging about the Nexus One being a 'superphone'. wtf..... they cant even meet current smartphone standards! Sorely disapointed with google so far.....
I dont have a problem with this as i understand android is still 'young' but what about those which are available on both iphone and android? How is it possible the same app written by the same company handles so differently on 2 different OSs? My biggest annoyance is the difference between the facebook apps. I gave up with the android version after 2 days and just moved to the mobile browser version. The iphone one is awesome, so why the difference? Maybe Google should spend sometime defining some standards.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the Android or iPhone APIs. It sounds as though you think you have established a scientific control by looking at one company's iPhone apps vs. their Android offerings. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's very likely that completely different teams wrote each version, under completely different management. In all likelihood the iPhone version had a substantially larger budget and more experienced coders, due to both its age and popularity.
Feel free to suggest that there are many half-arsed Android applications out there, but it's kind of disgusting to attack the platform design without knowing anything about it.
Last edited by tliebeck; January 10th, 2010 at 11:53 PM.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the Android or iPhone APIs. It sounds as though you think you have established a scientific control by looking at one company's iPhone apps vs. their Android offerings. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's very likely that completely different teams wrote each version, under completely different management. In all likelihood the iPhone version had a substantially larger budget and more experienced coders, due to both its age and popularity.
Feel free to suggest that there are many half-arsed Android applications out there, but it's kind of disgusting to attack the platform design without knowing anything about it.
Lol, chill dude, no need to get so heated. Yes i dont disagree that the apps may be written by different teams but i am not referring to small firms. My 2 examples would be
1) Facebook app written by Facebook. I find it difficult to believe that FB would not commit equal or similar resources or infact have totally unconnected dev teams developing their app for different platforms. Maybe you know indepth on this.
2) Google app written for iphone (cant find a comparison for android). I know its cosmetic but i really liked the voice searching thing that google released for iphone. Cant seem to find it on android.
Essentially, if you disagree with my statement that for like-for-like iphone vs android apps do not have any substantial difference then we will just have to agree to disagree. I am not dissing android, theres a reason why i spent money and signed myself to a long term contract for this phone and platform. I have never owned or expect to own an iphone but i have to honestly say the stuff on iphone is alot cleaner and professional.
Lol, chill dude, no need to get so heated. Yes i dont disagree that the apps may be written by different teams but i am not referring to small firms. My 2 examples would be
1) Facebook app written by Facebook. I find it difficult to believe that FB would not commit equal or similar resources or infact have totally unconnected dev teams developing their app for different platforms. Maybe you know indepth on this.
2) Google app written for iphone (cant find a comparison for android). I know its cosmetic but i really liked the voice searching thing that google released for iphone. Cant seem to find it on android.
Essentially, if you disagree with my statement that for like-for-like iphone vs android apps do not have any substantial difference then we will just have to agree to disagree. I am not dissing android, theres a reason why i spent money and signed myself to a long term contract for this phone and platform. I have never owned or expect to own an iphone but i have to honestly say the stuff on iphone is alot cleaner and professional.
I don't have any inside information on the Facebook app. But iPhone apps are written in Objective C, whereas Android apps are written in Java. So it's not a stretch to imagine you'll see different devs on each item.
Software companies really do put entirely different units on different platforms, and they often don't have adequate communication. As a for instance, look at the lack of commonality between MS Office for OS X vs. Windows (over the past decade). They have about as much in common with each other as they do with OpenOffice. Heck, I've seen OpenOffice do a better job of opening a Windows PPT file than Mac Office. I think this lack of collaboration within companies is completely insane, but it does happen quite a lot.
The only thing that actually bugs me is drawing the conclusion that Android has a bad design...I've seen plenty of horrible Android implementations of iPhone apps. Just go take a look at the reviews of "The Sims" for Android (and the screenshots). They didn't even try.
I don't have any inside information on the Facebook app. But iPhone apps are written in Objective C, whereas Android apps are written in Java. So it's not a stretch to imagine you'll see different devs on each item.
Software companies really do put entirely different units on different platforms, and they often don't have adequate communication. As a for instance, look at the lack of commonality between MS Office for OS X vs. Windows (over the past decade). They have about as much in common with each other as they do with OpenOffice. Heck, I've seen OpenOffice do a better job of opening a Windows PPT file than Mac Office. I think this lack of collaboration within companies is completely insane, but it does happen quite a lot.
The only thing that actually bugs me is drawing the conclusion that Android has a bad design...I've seen plenty of horrible Android implementations of iPhone apps. Just go take a look at the reviews of "The Sims" for Android (and the screenshots). They didn't even try.
I wouldn't disagree with your point on little communication between dev teams on different platforms but it does appear google has set the entry bar pretty low.
Perhaps this is small but for instance, a messaging app (messagenow) i downloaded for both iphone and android. I wont go into the cosmetic stuff but there was one function which is to delete a contact you have added. On the iphone, its standard, you have that delete logo that comes up on the left hand side (i assume this is part of the API definition, maybe i am wrong) and you delete a contact. Simple. On the android version, this wasn't enabled until 2 updates by the developer. Shouldn't stuff like these be defined as a minimum requirement? As this is small startup dev team of 2-5 ppl, i also guess they are all camped out in a room/garage/basement together somewhere in California. So i find the basis of lack of communcation difficult to see.
I see the argument that android is a totally open platform where everyone can develop anything (as long as its not malicious). But from a technologically uneducated end-user point of view, if you picked up an android and an iphone, it would seem as though the android platform is not as good as the iphone's. Again, I understand most of the arguments (i used to be a coder several moons ago) but isn't the final product what matters most in the end? Shouldnt google set the bar higher?
Only time will tell, developers need time to port games to 2.x, and create original games. Patience is good, I believe the advances android has made in OS, applications, and hardware has advanced quicker then the beginning of the first iPhone. Open source helps spread fast development.
Is it just me, or... (Android app/game quality)
. Also no pinch to zoom on maps? What's with that? Andy Rubin's answer for that was that he 'doesnt like 2-handed operation?'. Well there are plenty of us who do!
