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Android is for startups

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Re: Android is for startups

#231

Post by charleslmunger »

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…

Have you tried using the x86 images with KVM? They're quite speedy.

Re: Android is for startups

#232

Post by general_failure »

t1m wrote: post #225
general_failure wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? It was windows basically and iteration was depending on the App author.

In 1990 microsoftland, most people were still using DOS. Borland had Turbo Pascal and Turbo C products on the market for a number of years - vt100 style text menuing systems were still king in MS-DOS. Windows 3.1 was released in 1992, which was the real starting adoption point for the majority of the market. By that time, the NeXT computer had already been out for four years, the Mac and X Windows were eight. I was a…

OK, you win. But you completely missed the point of 1990 in that post (hint: he meant windows)

Re: Android is for startups

#233

Post by eonil »

Wrong. Completely wrong. Stop trying this stupid wording fraud.

What the hell the Android means? The users? Or the cartel? Android users are never starving for beautiful apps. The Android cartel does. Android users always starving for free stuffs, not beautiful. What kind of idiot choose Android for beautiful apps instead of iOS which is already-existing and also proven? Android has no beautiful apps because the users don't want it.

Market share? Market share itself doesn't make money. Especially blind market is purely useless. This article is just a mutated clone of crappy meme: "Say market share, and never say how the market share will make money.". Even Google and telecoms are making more money on iOS.

Android is pretty attractive toy for a developer. But for business? No kidding.

Re: Android is for startups

#234

Post by tadfisher »

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.

Perhaps for software development, but not for product development. Often as or more important to a product is finding out how it works for real users, and rapidly prototyping and disseminating builds is a good way to do that.

While software engineering is hard as a discipline, I don't feel it is the hardest part of building a startup.

Re: Android is for startups

#235

Post by clarky07 »

Steko wrote: post #107
clarky07 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2.3x is still very significant. Would you rather make 3k a month, or 6.9k a month? One of those is 36k a year. The other is 82.8k a year. I know which one I'd prefer.

The correct answer is to target both as 3.3 is significantly better than 2.3. And 2.3 was 2.6 in January so for a really bad back of the envelope calculation we can guess 2.3 will be 1.0 sometime before 2017.

That could be true, but not necessarily. There is an opportunity cost to take into account. Is it better to port to the other platform, or just work on another app for the same platform?

I think there are lots of advantages and good reasons to target both, but as long as the majority of the revenue comes from iOS, it makes sense to target iOS first.

Also, lots can happen between now and 2017. 4 years ago nokia and blackberry were still competing. iOS or Android could in theory be small players in 4 years. (Note that I don't think that will be the case, but it's possible.)

Re: Android is for startups

#236

Post by tadfisher »

opendomain wrote: post #73
opendomain wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android Apss are easier to deploy, but becuase of that, you get bad code - or WORSE - viruses! There are several Andoid apps that are Malware - there is not one in Apple App store.

Wow! Bad karma for dissing Android! For the record - my family has every platform, including Andorid phone, kindle, and set top boxes. I personally had 2 malwares installed on my Galaxy that bricked it. Also there are way too many apps on Android that ask for information access they should not have - like my GPS location or contacts info for a game. Andoid needs a little higher bar to remove this crapware.

If your phone was truly bricked, how did you identify that it was indeed "two malware" that bricked it?

Re: Android is for startups

#237

Post by ajtaylor »

slewis wrote: post #215
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…

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…

At $work we had an IOS application developed. Test Flight wasn't too bad to setup, but it was a bit of a pain having to click the link in the email from within the IOS device (an old ipod touch in my case). Once Test Flight was setup, it was pretty smooth from my end to update, but certainly wasn't as simple as an auto-update in the Play store.

Re: Android is for startups

#238

Post by yla »

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…

Hay. Have you tried Genymotion (http://www.genymotion.com/). It's really really fast. Currently, they only support for Android 4.+ emulators but they will support the lower api soon.

Re: Android is for startups

#239

Post by slacka »

slewis wrote: post #215
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…

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 fast with tools like limera1n.

Re: Android is for startups

#240

Post by habosa »

The speed of pushing to the Play Store can't be overrated for startups. If you release an app that has a critical bug this is what happens:

iOS: Fix it, wait days-weeks for approval, push the update

Android: Fix it, wait 30 seconds, update pushed to everyone

If the bug is big enough, this can be the difference between losing all of your initial users and gaining critical mass.

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