How can this be sustainable? all this fragmentation/versions - iOS new >=7 and I feel like unless the app is taking advantage of some inherent hardware capability of the phone/tablet everything should eventually be HTML5.
Fertile Ground
81–90 of 219 posts
Re: Fertile Ground
#82I hope I'm not in some crazy minority here, but I actually value stability and UIs not changing radically all the time. I feel like there's a craze afoot at the moment to "redesign everything all the time" and I'm not a big fan of it. If you're in tech, sure, it's the "price of progress" but for the lay user (i.e. the people who pay us money for software) it's just annoying.
That was my thought too. I'm a bit agog at seeing a developer lauding a platform owner for burning down the platform. If you're going to invest time and money in a platform, the last thing you want is to find out after that investment has been sunk that the platform steward likes to periodically smash everything. Marco argues that while this behavior is bad for incumbents, it's good for new entrants, but that doesn't…
I think his point was that not that the platform is being "burned down" but that it was going "arise anew, like a phoenix from the Ashes" - it's not like iOS will be gone in three months - but it will be markedly different.
Also - he was highlighting that this will suck somewhat for incumbents (which, having sold Instapaper, and "The Magazine" he is not), but that it offers great opportunities for people willing to fully commit to the new iOS 7 worldview (who in turn may be wiped out in another 8 years - but hey, 8 years is a long time.
Regarding, "If you're going to invest time and money in a platform, the last thing you want is to find out after that investment has been sunk that the platform steward likes to periodically smash everything."
Heck, based on a small sampling of anecdotes from iOS developers I know - I bet 90% of all iOS developers make the majority of their income on an app in in less than six months, fewer than 10% experience "significant income" over a full year, and less than 1% have multi-year incomes from an app that is enough to have a comfortable six-figure salary. The nature of iOS application development is different from Desktop Application Development, and, for most (excluding the top 5,000 Apps) - the real money is in new applications.
So - yes, this may be jarring for that 1% - but the other 99% have a great opportunity opening for the next six - nine months.
Re: Fertile Ground
#83I hope I'm not in some crazy minority here, but I actually value stability and UIs not changing radically all the time. I feel like there's a craze afoot at the moment to "redesign everything all the time" and I'm not a big fan of it. If you're in tech, sure, it's the "price of progress" but for the lay user (i.e. the people who pay us money for software) it's just annoying.
I agree with you. The iOS aesthetic, though imperfect, was stable and quite nice. In my opinion, Apple should have merely eliminated some of the more egregious skeuomorphisms and brought their apps more in line with the semi-flat look that the OS has had for years. This sort of total visual upheaval is superfluous, if not detrimental. From what I've seen, it looks insultingly bad. There are better ways to allocate de…
I have to disagree. Inside-app navigation in iOS is, truth be told, bodgy and confusing. Throw on top of that the need to handle notifications and app intercommunication and multitasking better and some systematic rethinking was really needed. I agree that graphically the new "commercial-art retro-chic meets skinny Helvetica" look feels like hard going - "it's sorbet and Love Hearts for dinner, everyone!" - but hopefully they'll have tidied and calmed things a bit by launch.
Re: Fertile Ground
#84Fertile ground is Google Glass, the new Kinect sensor, 3d printing, etc... There are so many more interesting targets, I hope we don't focus our best on new skins for flashlight apps.
Don't forget the iAds with your flashlight app.
Re: Fertile Ground
#85I've faced it in other platforms and it's easily overcome with software patterns that you should already be using. If you have a good separations of concerns and the UI is truly decoupled from your logic and models you should not be having any issues. If you don't already have that use this time to refactor and move forward. Some things won't be possible across both platforms. Find those now and address them first.
Re: Fertile Ground
#86Aren't the well/better funded dev shops and apps going to more easily make the transition? Won't the smaller ones feel the pain of backward/multi version support more acutely? Didn't we just empower the status quo? True there'll be net new revs with no legacy issues but not sure how game changing that is.
Re: Fertile Ground
#87Yay change for change's sake. This is exactly the wrong attitude in my opinion. How does it help users to all of a sudden have most apps feel ancient? Is it really something to be proud of? That for the next year we'll be working on replacing existing utilities so that they feel "right" and "fresh" instead of doing what we should be doing: thinking of actual new software that is worthwhile to write. I've been saying…
Cause, like, I still use Visicalc and it works great.
Re: Fertile Ground
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
iOS6 is at 93% and it hasn't even been a year yet. Where's Jellybean? Who's still stuck writing apps that are compatible with Gingerbread and have to use ActionBar Sherlock?
The thing is a number of developers are just writing for 4.0 and above. I've not saying fragmentation on Android isn't bad. What I'm arguing is fragmentation on iOS is being framed as a good thing (actually a "great" thing) by the author of the post.
But Android wouldn't be (OS) fragmented if you had 90%+ of the user population on Jelly Bean 4.1+
iOS isn't going to fragment - the vast majority of the user base will immediately upgrade to iOS 7.
Re: Fertile Ground
#89It seems hypocritical to laud fragmentation when it happens in iOS and decry it in Android. These changes seem similar to the Android differences in gingerbread and post-honeycomb. The resulting effect on developers will be the same. iOS 7 has made it apparent which bloggers are unable or unwilling to be fair in their criticism when it comes to Apple. The mismatched gradients on the new icons are beautiful to them, t…
Android would not have a real fragmentation issue if 70% of all users could easily update and did so within 12 months. Important distinction that negates this argument I think. (I am Android user for day to day phone)
Re: Fertile Ground
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
iOS6 is at 93% and it hasn't even been a year yet. Where's Jellybean? Who's still stuck writing apps that are compatible with Gingerbread and have to use ActionBar Sherlock?
The thing is a number of developers are just writing for 4.0 and above. I've not saying fragmentation on Android isn't bad. What I'm arguing is fragmentation on iOS is being framed as a good thing (actually a "great" thing) by the author of the post.
He's not saying it's a great thing for users - he's saying it's a great thing for developers looking to enter a crowded space, because there will be some room to enter the market targeting only iOS 7 while established players are figuring out how to juggle the multiple OS versions.