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Android is for startups

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Re: Android is for startups

#161

Post by rsfinn »

minimax wrote: post #154
aryastark wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you need apple hardware and software It's worse than that, I'm afraid. You need the absolute latest of both. My perfectly fine Macbook from 2008 should be more than adequate for developing iOS apps. It's a core2 duo with 2GB of RAM. I mean, these aren't exactly the days of Pentium 60 vs. XT 8088. Yet the max OS I can upgrade to is Lion. And that's with going through Snow Leopard first. And who knows how much longer…

I have a 2008 MacBook (5,1) which I upgraded to 8GB RAM and an SSD. It runs Mountain Lion just fine. I use it for all sorts of things including Xcode. No idea what you're talking about here.

He must have the last plastic MacBook (4,1), which has a 32-bit EFI firmware and will not boot a 64-bit kernel; Mountain Lion only has a 64-bit kernel. So, even if one thinks it should run Mountain Lion, it can't run Mountain Lion. End of discussion.

If he wants to actually run Mountain Lion and develop for iOS (instead of complaining that he can't do it on his current machine), then $850 at the Apple Store will get him a refurbished MacBook Air (last year's model) that will be probably be much nicer to use (it will certainly be much lighter and have longer battery life). He could probably get a couple hundred bucks for his old one if it's in decent shape.

Re: Android is for startups

#162

Post by chetanahuja »

Lots of "Android apps are no good" chiming in going on here. I've been an iOS user since the week after the first iPhone came out and still am (due to an iPad mini). But gave up on iOS for my phone because I can't find the following apps on iOS.

1) Alternate Launcher with pretty much infinite flexibility on look and feel.

2) Swype like keyboard options. Typing anything on iOS now feels like I travelled back in time to horse-and-buggy era.

3) Tasker app. Enough said.

4) Google Now. Enough said.

5) This is not an app per se, but the "share with" option for pictures etc that simply let me chose any suitable app on the phone that lets me share that particular object using pretty much any means of sharing out there.

And this is not even counting all the hacker'y goodness of having a full root shell with an almost complete debian environment on my Nexus devices. No "jailbreak" required. Nexus devices are rootable by design.

If you call yourself a hacker (this is hacker news... right?) and have turned your nose up at Android so far, you're simply missing out on the future of portable devices. iOS is catered to non-technical consumers and its feature-set (both for users as well as for developers) is accordingly restricted. The future killer apps are being written for Android today and you're not aware of what a mobile device is (and should be) capable of today and by extension, tomorrow.

[Edit: 1, 2 and 3 in that list above are paid apps btw. Checkout out the install numbers for those three on the play-store. Android developers writing stuff for Android (and not just copying stale iOS material) are making plenty of money]

Re: Android is for startups

#163

Post by rsfinn »

jordanthoms wrote: post #145
aryastark wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He apparently had the bad luck to own the most recently made model of Macintosh that will not run Mountain Lion; virtually every other Mac from 2008 is OK.

The business case for supporting older computers is very different for Microsoft (or for Linux) than it is for Apple.

Re: Android is for startups

#164

Post by superuser2 »

ensmotko wrote: post #90
jbjohns wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't even afford $100 a year you probably can afford anything you would need to develop for the platform (e.g. a mac).

If $100 a year would allow me to develop iOS apps on my Linux laptop I'd be fine with that. But $100 a year + paying for overpriced apple hardware doesn't sound appealing.

Exercise for people who think Macs are overpriced: find a machine with a solid state drive, excellent battery life, well built case, and high quality keyboard and trackpad for substantially less than the price of a Macbook Air.

Re: Android is for startups

#166

Post by alex_c »

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…

OK, so ~6 years later, I get a new laptop. The only reason I haven't already is because the MacBook was a great machine to start with.

I understand the complaint if mobile development is a hobby (then yes, iOS development gets expensive very quickly), but if it's how you make your living then it's literally a rounding error.

Re: Android is for startups

#167

Post by wizzard »

Sure, the release process might be easier on Android, but there are other factors involved in app development. Android is becoming a kind of curse word at my current job. Getting a working emulator can be a huge exercise in frustration (like for gMaps v2... forget it). Every and any feature or UI widget can break in unexpected ways on different devices. The tools are very functional but about as unintuitive and finicky as you can get. And I can tell you the documentation is not shorter because it's better.

I have nothing personal against Android, but let's not just skim over the actual DEVELOPMENT process.

Re: Android is for startups

#168

Post by corresation »

chasing wrote: post #160
corresation wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I entirely agree with your lead in, your last bit is very "where the puck was" thinking. Two years ago the Play store yielded 1/10th the revenue of the App Store, by common metrics. One year ago it was 1/4. The most recent stat is 1/2 -- still months old. Do you see where this is going? The #1 source of revenue for many games and other media on the App Store is via gifted iTunes cards. This is a mechanism that…

"Two years ago the Play store yielded 1/10th the revenue of the App Store, by common metrics. One year ago it was 1/4. The most recent stat is 1/2 -- still months old. Do you see where this is going?" Sure: I see that, if I'm releasing an app this year, I should target iOS first because Android is a distant second. (And can I say that I continue to hate the "puck" quote and, while it was a mildly clever over-generali…

Fascinating commentary about the "puck" quote, which existed decades before Jobs ever uttered it (did he? I know it as a quote that Gretzky's father told #99. Even that is unnecessary attribution, as it is fundamental training that every kid learns about hockey, and the wisdom is as old as the sport). The point of it, your personal hang-ups about it notwithstanding, is obvious: When a market is changing quickly, if you're undertaking a project that is going to take time -- which pretty much all mobile projects do -- you target where the market will be when you hit it, not where it was last year, or even right now.

if I'm releasing an app this year, I should target iOS first because Android is a distant second

Personally I target both "first", because the tools and methods to do so are simple and effective. However if you are somehow making Absolutely Median Software, then sure. Reality tends to be dramatically more nuanced, and such a blanket statement is almost certainly naive nonsense.

Re: Android is for startups

#169

Post by eddieplan9 »

domness wrote: post #95

Hmm, I think a lot of people are missing the whole point in this article. I do around 60% Ruby on Rails, 35% iOS and 5% Android dev. The idea around a "lean" startup being, that an MVP, or each new feature, or even testing a change to a previous feature is usually done in quick succession. This being testing with current users over a period of say, a week, and then from the results, changes can be made and the team h…

Isn't beta testing a problem more suitable for a third party service (https://testflightapp.com/)? Using app store to distribute beta quality product is a subpar solution IMHO.

Re: Android is for startups

#170

Post by zmmmmm »

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.

> They don't on the Play Store.

What is it that causes people to indulge in such hyperbole on this point? It's such an utterly ridiculous statement (obviously, people do buy things on the Play Store, there are plenty of paid apps with tens of thousands of purchases), yet it gets trotted out time and time again as an absolute as if it is an obvious accepted fact. How about a tiny bit of moderation:

"People pay for things less often on the Play Store"

You will sound a lot less like a troll.

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