Why, if I had to do it all again, I’d still choose iOS
Having a number of years experience in the mobile development space, pre-iOS even, the one thing that I find magical and delightful about iOS is how easily being a developer is. I don’t mean that iOS has the best garbage collection, or that the Ad Hoc build process or store approval process is not at times hellish. But with android looking more and more like J2ME, iOS is powerful in the way you can design 1 core experience with 1 core set of interactions, and be confident that what you build, even if it’s using the newest tools available to you, is going to be consumable by a vast majority of the iOS wielding public.
These numbers from a Quora post (recapped here) just prove what most developers already know: that we can safely target the newest versions of the platform, use the newest, best-est features of the SDK, and be assured that 90% of the people that can use our thing are able to with the software they have on their device.
Android, on the other hand, provides no user control over anything, it’s customers resigned to get updates whenever Verizon or whoever allow it. This leads to Android devs always needing to develop for the lowest common denominator, feature wise, so they can get the largest audience possible. You never hear about someone building apps just for the Nexus 1 / S.
This is why, especially with the advent of the Verzion iPhone, my personal strategy for anything I’m building is: Develop the best possible product for iPhone and get it in people’s hands. If people like it, then you have to solve the Android problem by hiring someone to port it for you.
My feeling is we may see the following paradoxical situation: android will continue to fragment and expand it’s market share, while at the same time lose more and more dedicated developers.
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wcrtr posted this
