Why Android Is the New Windows 424
An anonymous reader writes "Windows' dominance of the PC market has been good in many ways: reduced hardware costs, increased IT literacy and a standard development platform to name a few. Perhaps Android will bring similar benefits. But unless Google are very careful, it is likely to bring some of the same problems, too."
Re:Increased IT literacy??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Window's dominance of the PC market has been good in many ways ... increased IT literacy
What?! That's like saying McDonald's did anything for fine cuisine. Gimme a break!
Like McD has given us something with which to compare fine cuisine, Windows has given us a way to differentiate between those who are and aren't IT literate.
Re:mobile platform (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:mobile platform (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember Windows CE hand held devices! You would run around the net looking for applications and they would not run (oh sorry was compiled for MIPS and you have and ARM device, or some other screen size or assumed a physical keyboard or was complied for V 2.11 and you running some minor incrementally different version).
It's weird to see the same thing happening all over again. It's great to have an open platform but like an electrical outlet all the plugs fit, or USB or PCI (yes there are occasional incompatibilities) having standards that the developers can rely on is what makes things useful. Android is not even close to Windows (or any good modern desktop Linux Distro that will run on just about any hardware that meets spec and the applications for said OS for the most part will run)
I think many of us would like that kind of reliable application experience sans Apple's vendor lock in on hardware and OS.
As an aside I don't know why we're so willing to welcome Google as our mobile overlords. I personally don't see how the community can catch every bit of data gathering they've built into the code and then make a stable usable version you can compile for whatever hardware you've got. eg I'm unaware of tinfoil hat Android.
Re:mobile platform (Score:2, Interesting)
No, it's the other way around: when someone perpetuates stale myths for the sake of selling a device from corporation A instead of B, I can safely assume that the person doing the promotion is a fanboy.
Look, here's a person pretending the presence of a keyboard on some phones is somehow a problem for developers. It's not, no more than, say, some computers using a trackpad instead of a mouse will cause problems for Windows developers. OMG, phones without camera won't support my camera app! A nightmare! It's bullshit.
Re:mobile platform (Score:3, Interesting)
I've done some development on Android and I don't think I'd agree that it's a horrible platform. There are plenty of things to pick apart, and it can be tiring figuring out the way Google wants you to do certain things, but it doesn't seem any worse than learning any new API. Generally my code works on 80+% of the devices out there the first time I test it after debugging. From there it's usually small tweaks, and the bugs generally stem from me not doing things according to best practice. It's not unlike developing websites to some degree. You'll do tons of cool CSS hacks, only to realize it doesn't work right in IE. As you get more experienced, you know to stay away from problematic areas. Android development is similar in many ways. Perhaps frustrating at first, but with experience you can write code that works everywhere the overwhelming majority of the time.
Re:mobile platform (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that they do share his concerns [vlad1.com]. Not the version fragmentation problem, but the "lack of hardware uniformity" problem. Software testing in android is already hard, because the same software can work differently depending on some subtle hardware difference, so you need to test in different devices. It's not the end of the world, windows programmers were able to make programs for the hardware nightmare that the PC world is, but it's not nice.
Re:mobile platform (Score:3, Interesting)
As much as I dislike Apple, iPhones are a solid platform. They have a few different versions of the OS (there needs to be progress, right?), but that's it.
Is it? Or are you completely ignoring the 4 different physical devices with vastly differing hardware and capabilities. Whilst this doesn't hold a candle to Android it is still a case of having differing devices to choose to support or not. This is an inescapable fact of any platform that is upgraded regularly.
Most developers are probably choosing to not support the iphone2 by now but ignoring the iphone3 is still a very big market to ignore since many of the people who adopted it under contract are still stuck with it unless they pony up the full price for a new phone. Even allowing for just supporting iphone3 basically determines how much you can really utilise the 3D on the iPhone4 and encourages you to produce 2 different versions if you want to use it to it's fullest but still have a large enough market for your app. Granted for many things the 3D capabilities are not needed but for games that is a different matter.
And now you also have the iTab thrown into the mix. Like it or not, "fragmentation" is factor all developers have to deal with. You just pick which devices you want to support. With iOS you actually pick devices, with Win7 and Android you pick specifications but it is still a choice you have to make and always will be until we decide we do not want the to take advantage of any more hardware upgrades to our devices or until they hardware upgrades start being given away free like the software upgrades (I am not saying this is ever likely to happen on any platform).
Re:mobile platform (Score:4, Interesting)
...which is a real hoot because I have this "fragmentation" problem with my Macs. Some are older than others but none are terribly old. Yet some of them are capable of playing big studio games and others aren't. It's not like I am trying to play some high detail fast past shooter on these boxes. I am just interested in relatively mundane strategy games. Even these don't support the "lesser" GPUs that slightly older Macs have.
Unless the platform is entirely castrated, there will be "fragmentation" issues.
Then instead of "fragmentation" you will have the problem of n+1 completely incompatible platforms or some monster monopoly.
Re:mobile platform (Score:5, Interesting)
Fundamentally I agree with your premise, but Archos is not a good example, because it can never be certified for Android as it lacks key components, like that pesky phone part.
However, speaking as someone who once upon a time managed a platform matrix validation lab for Windows software, I agree completely that the platform matrix for Android is unwieldy. People who say that it should be easy to support all Android *certified* devices (much less all Android devices) are simply not doing the math. Constructing and maintaining a test environment where you can check your software against all screen resolutions, API's, and peripheral selections is a huge problem with combinatorial complexity. And actually running and debugging all those test cases is hugely time consuming and expensive.
Of course, I expect to be modded down. It seems that every time I reply with *actual* *real* *world* *experience* on a topic where I know enough to have managed many people and had a six figure hardware budget, I get modded down because my actual data conflicts with peoples' religious beliefs.
But, in the end, Android will probably win despite the technical complexity of testing software. It will win because of openness, and customers will whine about how buggy the aps are because they are essentially untestable. It *is* the new Windows in that respect. I believe that strongly enough that two days ago I removed the iPhone SDK from my Macbook and installed the Android SDK.... but with eyes wide open about how nasty and alligator filled the swamp ahead actually is.