21–30 of 48 posts
I'ma let him finish when his site comes up, but here why I generally recommend targeting Android 4: 1. If you want to make a UI that scales across all device sizes, and you don't want to use hacks like ActionBarSherlock that will become a maintenance headache after the moment of convenience, build your app skeleton around Android 4 APIs. 2. Targeting Android 4 avoids use of the Support Library for back-compatibility,…
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caching?
I'm on the cheapest plan on Digital Ocean. I'm resizing to a bigger plan.
I'ma let him finish when his site comes up, but here why I generally recommend targeting Android 4: 1. If you want to make a UI that scales across all device sizes, and you don't want to use hacks like ActionBarSherlock that will become a maintenance headache after the moment of convenience, build your app skeleton around Android 4 APIs. 2. Targeting Android 4 avoids use of the Support Library for back-compatibility,…
Site is back up!
I would add to the list the fact that people buy apps most often when they have just bought a new handset. Supporting old versions is like making a retrofit product. The market is inherently limited and more costly to support.
I feel that supporting Android 2.3 at this time is roughly equivalent to supporting IE6. For the majority of people, just stop targeting 2.3 support as a requirement. Perhaps it'll net you some additional marketshare in emerging markets, but for the most part, ≥API14 is ubiquitous to a point where this is a sensible decision.
http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html IE6 is 4.9% http://www.ie6countdown.com/ They're completely different.
Another graph that might make things easier to visualize (the blue and above is who we're talking about abandoning): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Android-dist-by-dessert.pn...
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You can be a great developer and not know the first thing about server administration. They aren't mutually inclusive skill-sets in the least. If I spend my day working on embedded systems, why would I give a rat's ass about a webserver?
Well, going off the title since the blog is down, Gingerbread is still 28% of Android phones out there. (Source http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html ) Not to mention there are still plenty on new GB phones sold in developing markets. He's advocating dropping potentially 30% of his potential consumers because it's technically easier. Some of us can probably afford that, some can't. But I just think…
Site is back up now.
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I'm on the cheapest plan on Digital Ocean. I'm resizing to a bigger plan.
Since it looks like you're on Wordpress, the supercache plugin ( http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-super-cache/ ) should help even on the cheapest Digital Ocean plan.
It's amazing to me that we're saying that a three year old OS is too old to have software written for it. Especially given that a part of the laptop market has metamorphosed into the tablet market. I guess that's not a problem if you buy new tablets/phones every year, which is what we're moving towards.
Android 4.0+ is just much more mature than 2.3 in terms of UI and API.
It's amazing to me that we're saying that a three year old OS is too old to have software written for it. Especially given that a part of the laptop market has metamorphosed into the tablet market. I guess that's not a problem if you buy new tablets/phones every year, which is what we're moving towards.
It's amazing to me that we're saying that a three year old OS is too old to have software written for it. Especially given that a part of the laptop market has metamorphosed into the tablet market. I guess that's not a problem if you buy new tablets/phones every year, which is what we're moving towards.
Maybe it will not be the same when Android 4.0 turns 3-years old. Android 4.0+ is just much more mature than 2.3 in terms of UI and API.
Maturity is a very important point. Between 2.3 and 4.0, Android became scale-able across tablets and handsets, with unified APIs enabling a unified code-base.
Compared to that big change, dealing with API differences from Android 4.0 to 4.4 is a relatively small matter, comparable to testing for hardware capabilities (and often tied to hardware capabilities). You can test for the API version on the fly and keep a unified code base.
I feel that supporting Android 2.3 at this time is roughly equivalent to supporting IE6. For the majority of people, just stop targeting 2.3 support as a requirement. Perhaps it'll net you some additional marketshare in emerging markets, but for the most part, ≥API14 is ubiquitous to a point where this is a sensible decision.
Not supporting IE6 will cost you lucrative enterprise dollars, Android 2.3, while popular, is not nearly as profitable.
