[OT?] Android phones

[Dave Cramer]

Of course on the flip side of the coin Apple can arbitrarily remove
your app from the appstore, or simply create their own competing app
if they like yours enough.

Software is tough ...

Dave

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 10:15 AM, Robert F. Kennedy <rfkennedy-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm an iphone user and use a quite expensive app in my ongoing effort
> to learn Chinese called PlecoDict. There really is no competition in
> this space for them. Michael Love the developer regularly sends out
> updates on where things are going. Here is what he had to say about
> why he wasn't going to develop on the Android platform.
>
> ***************************
>
> 8. Android
>
> I've gotten quite a few emails lately asking about a version of Pleco
> for the Google Android OS that's used on phones like the Nexus One and
> the Motorola Droid, so I wanted to provide some clarification on that
> too. While we know Android is getting to be quite popular, at the
> moment we're not prepared to commit to ever developing an Android
> version of Pleco, and here's why.
>
> The big problem with Android for us is that it's an open-source
> operating system; this means that the mobile phone manufacturers and
> cellular carriers that use it can essentially modify it however they
> see fit, without any restrictions from Google or anybody else. They
> don't need to pay Google any license fees, in fact they can even
> replace Google as the default search engine if they so choose.
>
> That might seem like a fine and lovely thing, but the problem with it
> from a software development perspective is that without a central
> authority, there's nobody in a position to make sure that every
> Android-based phone is compatible with all Android software; indeed,
> compatibility issues have already started to appear on some Android
> phone models. Adding new features to the operating system is a great
> way for mobile phone manufacturers to differentiate their phones from
> those of their competitors, so many of them have eagerly done so with
> Android, even to the detriment of software compatibility.
>
> Android's open-source nature also means that, somewhat ironically,
> manufacturers and cellular carriers can impose whatever restrictions
> they want on their Android-based phones without anyone stopping them.
> Android is often touted for its openness, the fact that unlike iPhone,
> Android phones can run applications even if they haven't been
> "approved" by the manufacturer, but on some newer Android phones (e.g.
> the Motorola Backflip) that's no longer the case; apps for those
> phones have to be submitted to Google or the phone manufacturer before
> release, and can be approved or rejected just as on iPhone.
>
> So we're very worried that in another year or two there'll no longer
> be one "Android" we can develop for - there could be half a dozen or
> more Android-based OSes that we have to individually develop /
> optimize our software for, and multiple application stores to deal
> with every time we release an update. Which could mean that instead of
> continuing to improve our software and add new features, we'd be
> spending all of our time simply making sure that our software works
> correctly on the latest Android phones.
>
> For some types of software, this might be OK - games, for example,
> generally rack up most of their sales in the first few months after
> they're released, so a developer can release an Android game and not
> really have to worry about whether it'll still work correctly on the
> newest Android phones a year down the line. And server-based
> applications like Twitter and Facebook are usually simple enough that
> they can be kept up-to-date with relatively little work. But Pleco
> sells very complicated, expensive, specialized software, and it
> usually takes us at least a year to add support for a new operating
> system, so we need a level of stability / consistency that we don't
> think we're likely to get with Android.
>
> Now of course this could change - Google could come up with some
> clever new licensing / incentive system to keep all of the various
> Android phone manufacturers in line, or the fragmentation problem
> could turn out to be less severe than we fear - but we'll need to see
> a lot of evidence that that's happening before we can consider
> developing an Android version. So even if we do eventually decide to
> do one, I think it's unlikely we'd begin working on it until sometime
> in 2011, which means it probably wouldn't be out until 2012.
>
> We are certainly aware of the need to offer *some* alternative to
> iPhone; I've never quite understood why so many people hate Apple
> (it's not like Microsoft is any better), but they do, and anyway it's
> not very good business to be dependent on just one platform for all /
> most of your sales. We're just not sure if Android is the right choice
> for that alternative; along with Windows Phone 7, the new Nokia
> Symbian^4 due out around the same time seems like it has a lot of
> potential (and, like Windows, would be easier to develop for than
> Android), and a mobile web-based version of Pleco has a great deal to
> recommend it too.
>
> Best,
> Robert
>
> On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 3:15 PM, Christopher Browne <cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 2:31 PM, S P Arif Sahari Wibowo
>> <arifsaha-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>>> On Sun, 28 Mar 2010, James Knott wrote:
>>>>
>>>> While it would be nice if they didn't diverge, it's still open source that
>>>> has it's /root in Linux.
>>>
>>> True, that's probably the most important thing. Furthermore divergence in
>>> kernel space is less an issue anyway.
>>
>> I suppose.  It won't affect userspace so much; adverse effects would
>> be on those trying to establish hardware compatibility between new
>> sorts of hardware and the platform.
>>
>>> IMHO a more important issue is the
>>> original Android's decission to have application stack that entirely
>>> different than in Linux OS (i.e. GNU/Linux). That mean that many
>>> applications have to be built specifically for Android; therefore the
>>> community size of the that application is much smaller than if it can use
>>> common Linux application.
>>
>> The size of community may be small now; if the stack gets used more
>> and more for mobile phones, the population increases, and "iPad-like"
>> devices would add further still to the population.
>>
>> What a "common Linux system" means is a mighty elusive thing; in the
>> 'embedded/mobile world' there are four answers that I don't imagine
>> are what you have in mind:
>>
>> 1.  Android would be one, for sure
>>
>> 2.  BusyBox, and very little more, which is what you frequently see on
>> storage devices
>>
>> 3.  Maemo (the Nokia platform, using some bits of GNU, originally with
>> Python+GTk, later biasing to Qt),
>>
>> 4.  Moblin+Maemo is in the process of begetting Meego.
>>
>> None of these represent places where I'd expect that what you'd call
>> "Common Linux apps" would necessarily run trivially.
>> --
>> http://linuxfinances.info/info/linuxdistributions.html
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>
>
>
> --
> Robert F. Kennedy
> Handyman Services
> c. 647-367-3145
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