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Android is for startups

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Re: Android is for startups

#241

Post by domness »

eddieplan9 wrote: post #169
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.

Yes, TestFlight is absolutely great for beta testing.

However, in the startup sense, it's not exactly beta testing, it's testing the market, so beta testing would be fine to test something you've built works, but by no means will show what people will think of the app/product.

Re: Android is for startups

#242

Post by bad_user »

slacka wrote: post #239
slewis wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company has prototyped on both platforms, and I strongly prefer Android for this purpose. Test flight is significantly more inconvenient for all parties than sending around Android apks. So is Apple's provisioning process for development (you'll certainly have to figure out how to re-provision your development devices a few times). Android's OS integration also makes for better demos of our app. Since it's a remot…

We're not a software shop, but we did make an iOS apps to interface with our hardware. Everyone in the development and testing was asked to jailbreak their phone. We probably had over 20 testers. By the time we reached beta and were ready for wider test market, we used Apple's signing process. We probably broke some rules and while it's not for everyone, it worked for us. Jailbraking my phone was amazing simple and f…

The easiness with which you can break an iPhone depends on the firmware it has installed on it and the precise moment in time you want to do it - if there's an easy jailbreak solution available or not. If it happens for an iPhone to be updated to the latest version for which there's no known vulnerability, you either have to wait some time for a jailbreak to be available or you have to go through hoops to downgrade it.

For me jailbreaking the phone just to be able to do development on it does not make sense. Why go through so much trouble, when clearly this hostility towards tinkering coming from Apple will likely get worse in the future.

You see, I believe in voting with your wallet (or time, or eyeballs, or whatever). If enough people complained to Apple that the current process sucks, then Apple might do something about it. But if the ones affected simply jailbreak their phones, taking the status-quo as a given and working around it, then Apple simply has no reason to change their policies.

We (developers) tend to have preferences and these preferences end up clouding our judgement. I love Android for example, but I hate it that I can't be a Google merchant on Google Play because of the country I live in. When something sucks, it sucks in spite of all the other things we love, and we really shouldn't let our preferences cloud our judgement.

Re: Android is for startups

#243

Post by bad_user »

threeseed wrote: post #224
general_failure wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are not comparing Dev tools. We are comparing Dev life cycle and methodologies

We are talking about choosing iOS versus Android for prototyping. My point is that the iOS development experience is far superior to Android in particular because of the strength of the simulator. How you "get your code running" is the most important part of the dev life cycle.

On the other hand, for Android it's far easier to get your app running on the device itself. The only thing you have to do is to connect the device to your computer and click Run in the IDE. Beginners can get something up and running within minutes, which includes the time to download the IDE and create a Hello World. The whole workflow runs well, as you get the logs in your IDE or whatever and you can do debugging and so on and it's really not that bad, given that no simulator can match an actual device - there's something to be said about keeping the phone in your hand, rotating it at will and touching it to see how the app feels.

Apple's provisioning process on the other hand is the most painful thing I ever experienced.

Re: Android is for startups

#244

Post by antback »

nucleardog wrote: post #228
slewis wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company has prototyped on both platforms, and I strongly prefer Android for this purpose. Test flight is significantly more inconvenient for all parties than sending around Android apks. So is Apple's provisioning process for development (you'll certainly have to figure out how to re-provision your development devices a few times). Android's OS integration also makes for better demos of our app. Since it's a remot…

I love Android. I really only develop for Android. But to say the Android emulators are better than the iOS simulator (or even comparable) is hilarious to me. The reason everyone tests on hardware is because the emulator is %@$#ing slow. i7 @ 4.2GHz, 12 GB of RAM... the emulator still takes MINUTES to start and runs unusably slow. The iOS Simulator on the MBP work gave me (mid-2010) runs at basically native speed. I…

try using genymotion. it takes 20 seconds on my mbp to starting up.

Re: Android is for startups

#245

Post by shinratdr »

What makes it good for startups also makes it good for malware, spam apps, information harvesting and other user unfriendly things.

I'm not arguing against this post, it's true in the sense that it is indisputably easier to iterate on Android vs iOS because of the lack of a review system. But as someone with both Android and iOS devices that they enjoy, it's very easy to see which one is a more user-friendly approach.

Having a broken app or two for a week is a small price to pay for trust. I don't trust the Play Store, I check out each individual app before downloading. On iOS because of the more robust review & permissions model, I can trust that while what I download might not be good, it will in all likelihood be safe.

In addition, I feel like evangelizing to developers like this is pointless. Besides the minority of personal developers driven primarily by morals, their preferred platform or preferred tools, developers go where the users are and the money is. If "Android is for startups" then that should be the case, and a blog post isn't going to make it so. The presence of startups iterating on Android initially makes it so, and that is driven by users + money.

Re: Android is for startups

#246

Post by pjmlp »

shitlord wrote: post #155
xutopia wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that is where the line divides. Android users are like you... they don't want to pay for software and go for cheaper hardware when they can.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to buy something when you are only developing for it and not actually planning on using it. I sometimes develop software for Windows, and I hate running it, so I won't purchase a copy of it. But that shouldn't prevent me from developing for it.

So advocating piracy are we?

Re: Android is for startups

#247

Post by bad_user »

chetanahuja wrote: post #162

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 t…

Android is awesome for the way it lets apps interoperate. The "share with" functionality is just one example and it's not just for photos either. For example if you have Readability installed, you can "share" the article to Readability from within both Chrome and Firefox (speaking of which, Firefox isn't available on iOS because Apple doesn't allow it).

I would like to add to your list the ability to completely block phone calls and SMS messages from annoying numbers, with no traces left in the phone's logs. Or the ability to automate your phone settings, depending on time or location, like turning the data off at 11 p.m. for battery preservation or turning silent while you're at work.

I don't know if such apps are still banned on iTunes, but it's what made me switch from an iPhone 3GS to a Galaxy S.

Re: Android is for startups

#248

Post by aka_butters »

wallflower wrote: post #230
fpgeek wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Play gift cards in the US go back to August 2012, IIRC.

To clarify the parent comment, I see iTunes gift cards for sale at grocery store checkout lines. Perfect spontaneous purchases. Where do you even buy a Google Play gift card?

I see them at Safeway and Target here in Mt. View all the time. My location might be relevant though :)

Re: Android is for startups

#249

Post by engrenage »

bad_user wrote: post #243
threeseed wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are talking about choosing iOS versus Android for prototyping. My point is that the iOS development experience is far superior to Android in particular because of the strength of the simulator. How you "get your code running" is the most important part of the dev life cycle.

On the other hand, for Android it's far easier to get your app running on the device itself. The only thing you have to do is to connect the device to your computer and click Run in the IDE. Beginners can get something up and running within minutes, which includes the time to download the IDE and create a Hello World. The whole workflow runs well, as you get the logs in your IDE or whatever and you can do debugging a…

> Apple's provisioning process on the other hand is the most painful thing I ever experienced.

Your information is years out of date. In XCode, you click 'use this device for development' and all the provisioning is done fully automatically.

So no. It is not far easier to get your app running on the device itself. That is just false.

Re: Android is for startups

#250

Post by engrenage »

chrischen wrote: post #196
engrenage wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But aside from all that, this discussion is not really about quality per se. It is about figuring out your business idea, getting it right. But surely the same logic applies to this too. Why haven't we already seen all kinds of innovative business ideas emerging through the rapid iteration that Android supposedly enables?

There are probably more innovative Android apps. Problem is nobody cares about the apps that much. When they choose a phone, they choose the phone first. Apps are an afterthought. iPhone caught on for the phone itself, its ability to browse the web and make calls. iPhone didn't even start out with apps. Even then, apps didn't come into play because customers demanded them.

So you're saying Android users don't care about innovative apps? That makes this whole discussion moot.
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