Android is for startups • Hacker News Board

Re: Android is for startups

#141

Post by jeena » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 10:16 PM UTC

hrydgard wrote: post #132

jeena wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have my own company and wanted to do the same. Sadly for Swedish companies you have to be a "Aktiebolaget", you need to be on the stockmarket, to be able to have your company name in the App store. My options waere to either invest about $8000 to become a AB or open a LLC in UK while living in Sweden. After half a year of trying and failing I just gave up and stopped developing for iOS. Now I just started developin…

Starting an AB does not mean that you're "on the stock market", it's just an LLC, you'll own all the shares yourself privately. You could also start an "Enskild firma" which doesn't cost much and requires no 50K SEK bound capital.

Ah ok, thanks for the clearification. I already have a "Enskild firma" and they don't allow them in the AppStore.

Re: Android is for startups

#142

Post by spot » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 10:17 PM UTC

9999 wrote: post #74

The iOS development cycle works the way it does to protect Apple's customers. The people that pay for your application deserve and demand a certain level of quality. They also shouldn't be constantly bothered with updating your hastily developed, poorly tested, 'rapidly iterating' product. As for Android, Google doesn't care. The person with the Android phone is not their customer, they're the product. Google is in t…

FYI android apps update automatically without intervention from the user. yet another way android wins.

and then for good measure you repeat the nonsensical statement that google doesn't care. of course they want users to love android and increase their audience.

Re: Android is for startups

#143

Post by warfangle » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 10:18 PM UTC

vmarsy wrote: post #139

winslow wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of that comes from the iTunes gift cards that everybody seems to get for Christmas, Birthdays, etc. I purchased my first app with "real" money a month or two ago for android.

Even if it's true, I don't think developers care if the money they got at the end of the month comes from a gift card or a credit card. Google Play gift cards exist too, I don't know if you can buy music with it though, if not it's logic that iTunes cards sells better.

Nobody knows that Google Play gift cards exist.

I've been using Android since I got rid of the iPhone 3G (circa Nexus One), and this thread is the _first_ time I've heard of it being available.

Re: Android is for startups

#144

Post by jordanthoms » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 10:24 PM UTC

9999 wrote: post #74

The iOS development cycle works the way it does to protect Apple's customers. The people that pay for your application deserve and demand a certain level of quality. They also shouldn't be constantly bothered with updating your hastily developed, poorly tested, 'rapidly iterating' product. As for Android, Google doesn't care. The person with the Android phone is not their customer, they're the product. Google is in t…

So preventing people from updating their app for a week even if they find bugs helps quality? Should we start making website changes only once a week to improve quality - I expect Heroku will implement a 5-day delay in deploys?

Re: Android is for startups

#145

Post by jordanthoms » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 10:28 PM UTC

aryastark wrote: post #136

alex_c wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"5 years old" is a pretty far cry from "absolute latest". My 2008 Core2 Duo MacBook, upgraded to 5GB of RAM and an SSD, works like a champ for iPhone development. I don't understand this complaint.

at best you can run OS X Lion. That's it. Before you even get to that, though, you have to upgrade to Snow Leopard for silly arbitrary reasons. OS X is currently on Mountain Lion, going to Mavericks real soon now. I would not count on Xcode running on Lion for any real length of time now. After that, you're 100% screwed. Contrast that to Windows XP, where I can still run the latest iTunes and sync the latest iPhone 5…

Wow, I'm amazed they dropped support for computers that recent. New versions Windows/Linux will still run on very old hardware, there are usually drivers around.

Re: Android is for startups

#146

Post by chj » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 10:31 PM UTC

The artificial limitations around iOS are contrary to what developers should believe in -- the freedom to write and distribute software on a platform without approval from some central authority.

Despite the fact that iOS has much better design and comes with much better developer tools, Android is nowadays the better choice.

Re: Android is for startups

#147

Post by ipodize » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 10:37 PM UTC

babebridou wrote: post #100

lukabratos wrote: post #24

"Knock, knock." "Who’s there?" "Very long pause…." "Java."

"2 weeks later..." "[NSString stringWithFormat: @"%@ who?", result];"

8 months later: "ArithmeticException - joke doesn't add up"

Re: Android is for startups

#148

Post by richardwhiuk » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 10:40 PM UTC

dlhavema wrote: post #65

x0054 wrote: post #49

I think the difference in development comes in when you need to do some hardware testing. With apple you need to design for 3 different display sizes, with 2 resolutions each. You also have to test your product on (at most) 12 different devices, and that's if you really want to cover the field. On the other hand, with Android, if you want to do it right, you need to design for hundreds of different screen sizes, all…

there was an article posted here a few weeks ago that talked about an android development company/group that boiled it down to ~10 major categories of devices that they needed to test with to get maximum device acceptance. So for them, unless a whole category of device comes out, like a smart watch for example, they do not need to have every device to test. and this encompassed screen sizes and OS versions.

You can test on a limited range, but you will hit handset specific bugs - its just a fact of life on Android.

Re: Android is for startups

#149

Post by cbsmith » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 10:42 PM UTC

benihana wrote: post #39

Another post on the top of Hacker News making the mistake of thinking paying customers give a crap about how easy it is to [write|deploy|test|debug] your app. Even with all the pain associated with the App Store people still write more apps for it than ever. Why? Cause people pay for apps there. They don't on the Play Store.

Another comment on the top of a Hacker News post making the mistake of thinking that all good revenue sources are good revenue sources for startups.

Customers don't give a crap about how easy it is to [write|deploy|test|debug], but if you add a lot of friction to the iterative process, you take away a lot of the advantage a small startup might have over an established business operating in the same space.

Established businesses actually have a lot of efficiencies when it comes to maintaining the status quo and slowly evolving change, and the Apple AppStore model adds enough friction such that status quo and slowly evolving change are much more of the terrain than not.

Keep in mind the innovator's dilemma, and think about how startups exploit it. You want to pick some area where the established businesses aren't competitive, which has narrow margins, larger scale, faster development cycles... and then when you've got a lean and mean product, you go after the established territory.

Re: Android is for startups

#150

Post by dycow » Wed, Sep 04, 2013, 10:44 PM UTC

9999 wrote: post #74

The iOS development cycle works the way it does to protect Apple's customers. The people that pay for your application deserve and demand a certain level of quality. They also shouldn't be constantly bothered with updating your hastily developed, poorly tested, 'rapidly iterating' product. As for Android, Google doesn't care. The person with the Android phone is not their customer, they're the product. Google is in t…

I'm an android developer and I agree with this comment. The article as a whole paints a really bad picture of Apple's development process when, in honesty, I wish Google would learn a bit from the things Apple does really well. I really hope people don't think it's okay to ship an app with a typo in the title -- that's just lazy and irresponsible. While I wish the $99 fee was only required to publish an app (as opposed to being required to develop one), I'm still waiting for the day when Google can truly compete with iOS on a platform and tools level. In my opinion, Google has a long way to go on that front despite their increasing market share (and all revenue advantages that ensue).