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Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

android-developers.googleblog.com

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Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#41

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

fmorel wrote: post #31
skybrian wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an Android developer but they say supporting older versions should still work: "Existing apps that are not receiving updates are unaffected. Developers remain free to use a minSdkVersion of their choice, so there is no change to your ability to build apps for older Android versions." [1] https://developer.android.com/distribute/best-practices/deve...

Yes, you can still support older versions. But the app must target at least Oreo, which means supporting the new permission model on newer versions of Android while making use of unfettered access on older versions.

Nothing prohibits backporting Cyanogen/Lineage permission controls to previous releases.

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#42

Post by balladeer »

bmurphy1976 wrote: post #33
gammateam wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android developers get around 3-5 years before they stop rationalizing the potential and ditch that ecosystem. Apple won this battle. The actual android users that "can't stand Apple and need control" have no clue what they are missing anymore. They haven't looked at Apple since 2013. Unlike Blackberry faithful, Android users really do have great more advanced technology on paper, but look, nobody cares.

Well that's a pretty shitty view. I've got an iPad I use regularly and develop for so I know iOS inside and out. My wife has an iPhone and I have to support all her bullshit all the time. I've been using Android since the Galaxy S2 and I'll keep my Android thank you very much. I'd trade my iPad for a new Nexus 7 in a heartbeat were one available. My non-tech savvy parents have been using Android for years. They don't…

Actually I have noticed one thing about parents i.e. the older generation (tech savvy or otherwise) they don't give a shit about anything they are not used to as long as they can get work done with whatever device they are already familiar with. It's good to see that they do not go after every new (over)hyped feature (which might not even have a practical use) unlike a lot of newer generation just for the sake of getting the latest toy.

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#43

Post by sjwright »

altair8800 wrote: post #32
the_trapper wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stupid thing is that these code names sometimes span multiple versions of Android and even API levels making it all even more of a clusterfuck of a platform. My suspicion is that they do this to hide all of the fragmentation and pretend that more handsets are up to date than they actually are.

What's the difference between named releases and Apple's semantic versioning? Both create groupings that hide fragmentation.

What fragmentation is being hidden behind Apple's iOS version numbers?

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#44

Post by mikelward »

the_trapper wrote: post #15
simcop2387 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They sort of do, the first letter of the new name is always the next one in the english alphabet. That said, they do have version numbers but almost no marketing uses them with or instead of the codenames. Kitkat Lolipop Marshmallow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history

The stupid thing is that these code names sometimes span multiple versions of Android and even API levels making it all even more of a clusterfuck of a platform. My suspicion is that they do this to hide all of the fragmentation and pretend that more handsets are up to date than they actually are.

The major "dessert" releases seem to happen about once a year now, with a big marketing push, and often substantial user-visible changes.

API levels change when there are major developer-visible changes. I assume any time there's a backwards incompatible change for app developers, they bump the API version, as is standard for any API.

No conspiracy theory required.

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#45

Post by Someone1234 »

izacus wrote: post #9
ilove_banh_mi wrote: post #5

I'm giving up on upgrading my apps for Android. The releases are dividing the market every single year and consequently steadily eroding sales. On the one hand Google's Nexus was released 3 years ago and is now obsolete; on the other hand Apple's iPhone 5s was released 5 years ago and gets to run iOS 12. On top of this, the vast majority of my paying customers use iOS, not Android (a variety of lifestyle and referenc…

The only way you get only 12% installation share on Oreo is if you're targeting Indian continent with Hindi localisation. For a western world targeted app, the stats are around 35-40% for Oreo right now. So you seem to be deliberately ignoring your own installation stats just to complain - the dashboard you're posted is pretty much not relevant for anyone but multi-million installation apps like Facebook. In other wo…

> but PLEASE do not spread misinformation.

The data they quoted is official from Google themselves. You've provided no data source by contrast, just anecdotes.

> good riddance actually, way too much toxic people in the community

They're "toxic" because they're raising the cost of doing business in the ecosystem as a limiting factor? That's quite a stretch.

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#46

Post by j16sdiz »

0x0 wrote: post #17
otachack wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you upgrading? Usually it's just a matter of changing a couple numbers in the Gradle file. The only headache with new SDKs are if you're trying to integrate new features that aren't in appcompat but even then it's straight forward to support.

There's been tons of subtle and not so subtle breaking changes from bumping targetSdkVersion, many that only manifests at runtime. Things like runtime-permission-grants, three iterations of C2DM, GCM, FCM, notification handling, inner classes in activities and fragments, background processing, NDK changes, etc etc. If you have a low-churn legacy but still useful app, coming back every year and between the subtle api…

GCM is being removed by google. You have to migrate to FCM anyway. This is unrelated to the targetSdkVersion.

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#47

Post by j16sdiz »

skybrian wrote: post #30
izacus wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since this year you won't be allowed to do that anymore - since backwards compatibility behaviour allowed app developers to avoid privacy protecting features like runtime permissions.

I'm not an Android developer but they say supporting older versions should still work: "Existing apps that are not receiving updates are unaffected. Developers remain free to use a minSdkVersion of their choice, so there is no change to your ability to build apps for older Android versions." [1] https://developer.android.com/distribute/best-practices/deve...

Not if you want to be listed on play store

> As we announced last year, Google Play will require all app updates to target Android Oreo (targetSdkVersion 26 or higher) by November 2018.

https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/08/introducin...

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#48

Post by akerro »

ilove_banh_mi wrote: post #5

I'm giving up on upgrading my apps for Android. The releases are dividing the market every single year and consequently steadily eroding sales. On the one hand Google's Nexus was released 3 years ago and is now obsolete; on the other hand Apple's iPhone 5s was released 5 years ago and gets to run iOS 12. On top of this, the vast majority of my paying customers use iOS, not Android (a variety of lifestyle and referenc…

My Motorola G4 was upgraded to Android 7 only 2 weeks ago :)

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#49

Post by akerro »

izacus wrote: post #26

It's rather sad to see how none of the comments here are actually commenting on Android P/Kotlin friendliness. (Which is available to all Android developers, not only those targeting P - the nullability headers will give you all the benefits even if your app supports older Androids.)

I actually wish there was an Android release targeted for Dart support with more Dart promotion. Since this year Java got a lot more powers, they're moving the language and ecosystem much faster, functional targets for Java 12 (will be released in 2019) contain almost everything Kotlin has now.

Re: Android Pie SDK is now more Kotlin-friendly

#50

Post by maccard »

wyattpeak wrote: post #35
ytwySXpMbS wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making an assumption here, but I assume you loathed the browser lock in because you tried using a different browser, probably Chrome. Thing is, for iOS, you have to drink the koolaid to truly see the benefit. Personally coming from Android it's so nice not being asked which app I want to open a link in all the time, I dont have to think about it. I know that sounds silly because you can choose a default, but it's too…

While I suspect you're right (a number of my family members use a full Apple ecosystem and love it), to someone who doesn't there seem to be an almost endless number of changes you need to make. I've had a couple of iPhones, and at times tried to fully use their system, but that promised "perfect simplicity" seems to always be around one more corner. Change your browser. Change your music provider. Change your backup…

> Change your browser.

On mobile. Your mobile browser has nothing to do with your desktop browser AFAICT.

> Change your music provider.

Apple Music, Deezer, Spotify, YouTube music (or whatever it's called now) all work perfectly on iOS, no? > Change your backup procedure.

Theoretically yes, if you were performing manual mobile backups before. Otherwise,you just let Apple handle it (and you're free to back up the gigantic image files that iTunes leaves on your PC yourself)

> After all that, your Windows PC is a problem.

What is your windows PC a problem for?

> that promised "perfect simplicity" seems to always be around one more corner

I disagree. If you use safari and iCloud you get the perfect simplicity.

On Android, that simplicity doesn't exist. I bought a flagship (galaxy s9) phone about two months ago, (my first android) only to find out that on a £700 phone: - Samsung bundle their own crapware, including a crappy launcher and a borderline unusable keyboard - They have their own standard for messages, health, Samsung pay, contacts, and camera, and their own app store. - all of the above are slightly different to the Google versions, or the Huawei versions. - they have bugs breaking fundamental functionalitied (work profile custom keyboard). Am I supposed to research every android feature I'm interested in using and check it's going to work on the (flagship) handset I try and buy? - permissions. There are apps out there with the crappy old permission model, some apps that just ask for catch all permissions and refuse to work without them, and the monitoring of permissions on Android is laughable. - updates. I found out yesterday that actually the android update has to go through Samsung, and then through my carrier, so it'll be 6 months before I get the latest version of Android (based on last year) on my brand new top of the line device.

Overall, almost that I've done on Android has been more difficult than on iOS.

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