We Need to Talk About Android • Hacker News Board

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#31

Post by mark_integerdsv » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 4:52 AM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #17

shingen wrote: post #3

The endless parade of fragmentation discussions regarding Android all prove one thing: a lot of people don't understand what wins a market. Customers lacking in technological savvy make up the radical majority of Android owners, they are never going to care about this issue so long as their smart phone functions at 85% good enough. 85% good enough, is more than enough to win a market if you have substantial other adv…

This article is not talking about what wins a market. In fact, it explicitly disclaims any attempt to apply these lessons to the wider world. It's simply a discussion of where Android falls short as relates to his particular needs. As such, this comment seems awfully off topic.

Fans of the platform seem to hammer on about market share an awful lot.

Stockholm Syndrome?

I really cannot fathom why a consumer, assuming they have no stock in the platform outside their own purchase should be so concerned about something as trivial as market share.

Were the platform in danger of disappearing due to low market share (WebOS) I'd understand that but puffing up your chest because the OS on your smartphone has the best market share seems very strange to me. It's really not a feature of the device.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#32

Post by edderly » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 4:54 AM UTC

herge wrote: post #6

edderly wrote: post #5

I think by the end of the year this will be less of a problem. Consider that last year two OS versions were released and the first was Honeycomb which had a very binding legal agreement associated with it so as not to appear on phone form factor devices. Then Icecream Sandwich comes out and as usual most of the Android ecosystem does not see any of the codeline until the AOSP release. So now it's 3 months down the ro…

How are we supposed to believe that the same phone manufacturers will not have the same problems with fragmentation with 4.0, 4.1, 4.x in the future?

The only relationship between the version of the OS and fragmentation is that a new OS rev usually introduces an additional API level. So if you write an app to API level 15 (4.0 IIRC) that will be available and work on subsequent revs.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#33

Post by zht » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 4:54 AM UTC

dman wrote: post #27

thought_alarm wrote: post #21

You are not Samsung's customer. Phone manufactures sell phones to carriers, not consumers. Success in the phone industry depends entirely how well you meet the demands of the carriers. RIM knows it (or knew it), Nokia knows it, Samsung knows it. Android is merely a platform that allows Samsung to tailor their devices to the carrier's requirements, in a way they couldn't do when they were selling Windows Mobile device…

Calling everyone one who buys a samsung device "unsuspecting public" is patronising. There are real reasons to buy a non apple device. I have listed some such reasons on an earlier thread - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3642152 . I also managed to miss one important reason in that list - 4G.

He's not calling everyone who buys a samsung device "unsuspecting public". He's specifically referring to those who wouldn't mind buying a 2.2 phone when 2.3 and 4.0 are out.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#34

Post by ajross » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 5:09 AM UTC

elithrar wrote: post #12

shingen wrote: post #3

The endless parade of fragmentation discussions regarding Android all prove one thing: a lot of people don't understand what wins a market. Customers lacking in technological savvy make up the radical majority of Android owners, they are never going to care about this issue so long as their smart phone functions at 85% good enough. 85% good enough, is more than enough to win a market if you have substantial other adv…

> Circa 2002 they had '95, 98, ME, and XP spread across over half a billion units. With further varied patch configurations and service packs. It's worth pointing out that this comparison isn't the same. You could, in 2002, run the latest version of Office on all of their operating systems. With Android, there are situations where even Google's own software (see Chrome on Android) only runs on the absolute latest ver…

Chrome is a beta released three weeks ago. And while I like it, it's a long way from being production quality. Are there any other examples of ICS-only software? Anywhere? Really the only serious bump in the Android API has been Froyo. There are lots of apps that require Froyo. Honestly I can't think of a single one (other than trial stuff like Chrome or niche things like handset-specific root tools, etc...) that requires even Gingerbread, much less ICS.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#35

Post by ajross » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 5:11 AM UTC

bunderbunder wrote: post #16

elithrar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Circa 2002 they had '95, 98, ME, and XP spread across over half a billion units. With further varied patch configurations and service packs. It's worth pointing out that this comparison isn't the same. You could, in 2002, run the latest version of Office on all of their operating systems. With Android, there are situations where even Google's own software (see Chrome on Android) only runs on the absolute latest ver…

And Microsoft was pushing updates and security patches to all those XP machines. Still are, over 10 years after initial release. Whereas Android users are lucky if they're still getting updates and security patches after 10 months.

Handset vendors and carriers push security patches routinely (though not commonly, the sandbox architecture makes it a lot less needed than on a desktop OS). It's OS upgrades that are slow. Holes get closed.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#36

Post by stdbrouw » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 5:15 AM UTC

eykanal wrote: post #13

shingen wrote: post #3

The endless parade of fragmentation discussions regarding Android all prove one thing: a lot of people don't understand what wins a market. Customers lacking in technological savvy make up the radical majority of Android owners, they are never going to care about this issue so long as their smart phone functions at 85% good enough. 85% good enough, is more than enough to win a market if you have substantial other adv…

There's an excellent line in the middle of the Android Support Visualization article he links to ( http://theunderstatement.com/post/11982112928/android-orphan... ): "In other words, Apple’s way of getting you to buy a new phone is to make you really happy with your current one, whereas apparently Android phone makers think they can get you to buy a new phone by making you really unhappy with your current one." 85% i…

Judging from the amount of people on old iPhones and iPads complaining about how every new version of iOS slows things down or is just plain not supported on their older model, that quote sounds rather... imaginative.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#37

Post by bunderbunder » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 5:21 AM UTC

ajross wrote: post #35

bunderbunder wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Microsoft was pushing updates and security patches to all those XP machines. Still are, over 10 years after initial release. Whereas Android users are lucky if they're still getting updates and security patches after 10 months.

Handset vendors and carriers push security patches routinely (though not commonly, the sandbox architecture makes it a lot less needed than on a desktop OS). It's OS upgrades that are slow. Holes get closed.

The article links another article which shows, graphically, how long a number of popular Android phones were getting updates - including security patches. According to it, Android users are lucky to be getting updates after a mere 10 months. Including security patches. And that's assuming you buy the phone immediately after it hits the market.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#38

Post by ricardobeat » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 5:30 AM UTC

zrgiu_ wrote: post #4

Android 2.2+ is not that bad, feature-wise. And with the release of several compatibility packages, it's rather easy to make app that run on more than 90% of the available Android devices. APIs haven't changed that much from 2.2 to 4.0, for the design you can easily implement your own, and with the introduction of Fragments it's even easier to make apps that look good on both phones and tablets for Android than for i…

Android apps that look good on tablets? With 2.2?? Dream on.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#39

Post by beatle » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 5:33 AM UTC

shingen wrote: post #3

The endless parade of fragmentation discussions regarding Android all prove one thing: a lot of people don't understand what wins a market. Customers lacking in technological savvy make up the radical majority of Android owners, they are never going to care about this issue so long as their smart phone functions at 85% good enough. 85% good enough, is more than enough to win a market if you have substantial other adv…

>The endless parade of fragmentation discussions regarding Android all prove one thing: a lot of people don't understand what wins a market.

market share is useless if your users are not spending money.

Android is in the same position as Nokia 10 yrs ago. And we all know how much Nokia profited from their enormous market share.

Re: We Need to Talk About Android

#40

Post by vibrunazo » Wed, Mar 07, 2012, 5:50 AM UTC

> "I'm talking about fragmentation of the basic operating system as deployed in the field.[...] I'm talking about APIs. [...] Apple is deploying and the installed base is rapidly upgrading to much more powerful APIs on the devices in consumers' hands"

The article says iOS newer APIs are better than Android older APIs, but he doesn't seem to back it up. I'm not very familar with iOS as I am with Android. So I would like to learn what exactly am I missing in the iOS API that is better?

As far as I know, Android 2.3 still have many useful APIs for us that iOS 5 is still missing, such as intent filters. And many of the great newer APIs were made backward compatiple, such as tablet/phone layout templating on the same app, and fragments. You can develop with these even if you support older devices. But I personally don't know of any features that the iOS puts available to us that developing for Android 2.3 does not.

If that is true. Then, for the developer perspective, OS API fragmentation only hurts Android when compared to "how much better Android could be". But it's not a problem when compared against iOS, if even Android 2.3 has better API than iOS 5?

So am I wrong here? If I am, could someone point me to a few examples of which awesome API features that iOS offer us that Android doesn't? I'm curious to learn that. Or is the article just full of it?