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Android is for startups

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Re: Android is for startups

#281

Post by rsynnott »

engrenage wrote: post #253
nathan_long wrote: post #41

Semi-related rant: My sole experience with Apple Developer stuff was being forced to register as one to get some basic command-line tools on my Mac. They made me complete a questionnaire about exactly which kinds of Apple products I wanted to develop for, and "none" wasn't an option. That's kind of a weird, Apple-centric worldview. "Errrm, I'm doing web development..."

You don't need to register as a developer to get the command line tools.

Some of the Java development tools (JNI-related stuff), oddly, used to require (free) registration. Don't think they do any more, though.

Re: Android is for startups

#282

Post by annnnd »

bjansn wrote: post #91
discostrings wrote: post #4

Being in the process of registering my LLC for an iOS Apple Developer account, I couldn't agree more. It's been over two months now of back-and-forth with Apple and Dun & Bradstreet, and the end is still not in sight. All I'd like them to do is take my $100 and give me the ability to test the free app I'm making on a device and then publish it, but apparently Apple feels a longer-than-two-month turnaround time is acc…

No registration allowed from your country? We registered a developer account on our business in The Netherlands a while ago. No problem at all.

Are you saying that you opened a bank account in Netherlands or that you have business entity there? (I am genuinly interested in this) Netherlands is among the supported countries [1], so the latter should work. But it makes no sense - what, I have to open a Ltd in another country just because Google doesn't support mine? Apart from that, Apple users are used to paying and thus pay more.

[1] https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...

Re: Android is for startups

#283

Post by BitMastro »

antback wrote: post #244
nucleardog wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm always surprised when people complain about the slowness of the emulator and they haven't tried genymotion or the x86 emulator.

I mean, they're tools developed for your job, learn to use them!

It would be like coding using a plain text editor.. you can do it, but it's not what you're supposed to do.

Re: Android is for startups

#284

Post by BitMastro »

mattquiros wrote: post #227
threeseed wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of what you said makes sense. Firstly on iOS you can send as many IPAs as I want to friends, testers, colleagues etc provided I've gone through the 30s process of adding them to Apple's list. This isn't some giant inconvenience that warrants completely switching a platform. Secondly if your app is intended to be cross platform. Then why would you start creating OS specific functionality you know will never work…

> This isn't some giant inconvenience that warrants completely switching a platform. WRONG. Contacting all 30 of your friends and WAITING for them to give you their device UUIDs and giving them long instructions on how to find it from iTunes if they don't know how? How is that easier than sending an APK to your friends which they can simply download and install? And you seem to just have glossed over how it's a waste…

threeseed is well known to "favour" the Apple ecosystem and disdain the Google one. In other words, it's trollish

Re: Android is for startups

#285

Post by mncolinlee »

engrenage wrote: post #177
mncolinlee wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quantity in dollars is completely and utterly irrelevant to the validated learning lean startups need. The OP's point is that Android allows you to start learning sooner and faster and to produce a better app which will make you more money. iOS might make you more money right now if you're lucky enough to chance on an app which matches what users already want, but even that ship may soon be sailing. Suppose iOS a…

This is all predicated on the idea that you being able to release apks easily gets users who care enough too give you valuable feedback that you can use to learn and improve your app faster. There are more apps on the play store than the iOS store, and apks have always been easy to work with and had this same advantage. If this advantage has always been present, why aren't the apps already better than iOS apps?

Just because you have potential does not guarantee you use it.

Many businesses started on iOS first, producing an Android version as an afterthought by contractors. Others produced a minimum viable product which made them money, so they felt no need to iterate. This means upstart competitors can easily take away the market share of established products. It's a good thing for startups.

Re: Android is for startups

#286

Post by BitMastro »

shawkinaw wrote: post #198
zmmmmm wrote: post #173

A lot of people seem to be missing the main point here. I don't think the article is actually advocating developing for Android and NOT iOS. I don't think it is even particularly advocating releasing on Android first. However starting your development on Android - as your first way of prototyping and finding your MVP - gives you a tremendous amount of agility and flexibility. You can create as many APKs as you want,…

With TestFlight, it's very un-fussy to send test builds on iOS as well. It's perhaps more fussy than with Android (I'm not sure), since you need the people to sign up and add their device to their TestFlight profile, and you then need to add the device UUID to your provisioning profile. But we're still talking about very quick turnaround (like 5 minutes.)

On Android you can mail a file, people click on the attachment, click allow installation and they're done.

I'm not saying it's better, in fact I think TestFlight may have many other useful features that this crude method doesn't offer (like tracking the UUIDs)

Re: Android is for startups

#287

Post by BitMastro »

djrogers wrote: post #57
KirinDave wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Malware apps come and go in both platforms, and both platforms actively try to stop malware when it's reported. Seriously. It's documented iOS has had malware: http://www.forbes.com/sites/adriankingsleyhughes/2012/07/06/...

There's a big difference between a platform with several hundred thousand known pieces of malware in the wild vs a platform with a tiny handful of what are mostly proof-of-concept apps. Open vs closed & other religious wars aside, it's ridiculous to imply that both platforms carry the same risk to end users.

I'd like to point out that "in the wild" on android literally means "they're not in the play store", but rather downloaded from somewhere else.

The play store scans every submitted the apps for malware (in the last versions it also scans applications NOT installed through the play store).

I don't want to be pedantic, it's just that I know more about this platform and I would like to be corrected if I say something wrong about platforms that I'm not familiar with.

Re: Android is for startups

#288

Post by threeseed »

BitMastro wrote: post #284
mattquiros wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This isn't some giant inconvenience that warrants completely switching a platform. WRONG. Contacting all 30 of your friends and WAITING for them to give you their device UUIDs and giving them long instructions on how to find it from iTunes if they don't know how? How is that easier than sending an APK to your friends which they can simply download and install? And you seem to just have glossed over how it's a waste…

threeseed is well known to "favour" the Apple ecosystem and disdain the Google one. In other words, it's trollish

I spent many years in "agency land" developing for iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone.

If you disagree that iOS is the more enjoyable platform to build for then contribute to the discussion. Otherwise you are the worthless one here.

Re: Android is for startups

#289

Post by threeseed »

chetanahuja wrote: post #259
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.

How you "get your code running" is the most important part of the dev life cycle. How you *get your code running on a device" is even better. And it's trivial with Android. It's a royal pain in the butt with iOS.

I take it you've NEVER actually developed on iOS before.

The simulator in almost every situation matches the device. And I don't understand how connecting your phone to your Mac constitutes "a royal pain in the butt".

Re: Android is for startups

#290

Post by threeseed »

wldlyinaccurate wrote: post #263
nucleardog wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

With regards to the speed, that's because the Android emulator is an emulator - it's converting ARM instructions to x86. Because of this, the Android emulator is actually a better representation of how apps run on real hardware than the iOS simulator . There are x86 images available for the Android emulator, which will run as fast as your host machine will allow.

Does real hardware convert x86 to ARM ?

No. So remind me again what your point is ?

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