The downside to fragmentation (1 Viewer)

[Sam Posten]

Here's a guy who gets it:http://batsov.com/articles/2013/08/14/android-is-not-better-neither-is-ios/

 

[Sam Posten]

Google taking steps to curb fragmentation at the root level:

It's not that Google is out of ideas, or the Android team is slowing down. Google has purposefully made every effort to make Android OS updates as boring as possible.

...
It's such a simple idea: Android updates roll out too slowly, so start releasing all the cool stuff separately. The hard part is making it actually work. But the first reason this is now possible is a little app that has finally come of age: "Google Play Services."
Enlarge / Google Play Services can do whatever it wants.
Calling Play Services an "app" doesn't really tell the whole story. For starters, it has an insane amount of permissions. It's basically a system-level process, and if the above list isn't enough for whatever it needs to do next, it can actually give itself more permissions without the user's consent. Play Services constantly runs in the background of every Android phone, and nearly every Google app relies on it to function. It's updatable, but it doesn't update through the Play Store like every other app. It has its own silent, automatic update mechanism that the user has no control over. In fact, most of the time the user never even knows an update has happened. The reason for the complete and absolute power this app has is simple: Google Play Services is Google's new platform.This is how you beat software fragmentation. When you can update just about anything without having to push out a new Android version, you have fewer and fewer reasons to bother calling up Samsung and begging them to work on a new update. When the new version of Android brings nothing other than low-level future-proofing, users stop caring about the update.
...
This is how you beat software fragmentation. When you can update just about anything without having to push out a new Android version, you have fewer and fewer reasons to bother calling up Samsung and begging them to work on a new update. When the new version of Android brings nothing other than low-level future-proofing, users stop caring about the update.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/balky-carriers-and-slow-oems-step-aside-google-is-defragging-android/


It's actually pretty brilliant end around the OEMs. My one concern is that it puts an extreme amount of security vectors in one 'app'.

 

[Sam Posten]

Ouch, this is even more harsh that my viewpoint:

The truth is, right now, Android sucks for indies.... the developers I talk to say Android is a frustrating and problematic place to release games. Especially dangerous is that at first, Android is arguably way more accessible to develop for than iOS; it's only after you've invested the time and pushed out your game that the real issues surface....While you might think the problem here is that it's hard to build a game that runs on so many different resolutions and processors, thanks to tools like Corona and Unity this actually isn't the case.The real problem is far more insidious. Cheap varied devices have brought smartphones to legions of users who wouldn't normally have them (either because of price, or interest), but the headless Android distribution scheme builds no infrastructure to teach these users how to actually use their devices, unlike Apple's Genius Bars. Not only that, but because of the variation in device displays, storage, and quality, it's hard for consumers to know if problems they encounter are with them, with the device, or with the software....This combination of many varied devices, uneducated users, and poor market construction leads to huge quantities of support emails, often far too many for small teams, including most indies, to handle.From my personal experience I can say that it's roughly 10-50x more emails per download than on iOS, and I'm looking at paid downloads! For freemium apps, the numbers are far worse. The situation is entirely unmanageable. Every developer that I've talked to about this issue told me the same thing: “Ignore support requests.”

http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/google-play-doesnt-want-your-favorite-ios-indie-game-and-other-reasons-why

 

[Sam Posten]

Behold, the power of open!http://www.htc.com/us/go/htc-software-updates/

 

[Edwin-S]

Decided to delete this comment. Sounded too confrontational.

 

[Sam Posten]

Now you have piqued my curiousity! PM it to me if you would!

 

[Edwin-S]

Now you have piqued my curiousity! PM it to me if you would!

I can't. I didn't keep a copy of it. Essentially, I asked if you were White Knighting for Apple since I know from your posts that you are down on the open source nature of Android. I basically said that you should stick with Apple's closed eco system and quit making it look like people who have gone with Android have made a mistake.After posting it, I felt it was offbase and uncalled for, so I deleted it. The fact is I didn't really have the right to say quit criticizing the Android OS. I may not agree with all of your stances, but I do like reading your posts, so I didn't want to create any bad blood with a surly sounding post.

 

[Sam Posten]

No bad blood at all. I don't have an agenda for one ecosystem or another, they all have their faults. What I champion is usability and fairness for users. For all of Apple's problems they put the user first where possible, so that users rarely have to deal with the stupidity as illustrated by HTC's ill conceived page. Apple of course is not perfect in this regard either but never on this scale. You can blame it on the carriers if you like, from my POV if Apple can do it they all can, they choose not to.

 

[Edwin-S]

The problem with open source is that companies immediately try to make their versions of "open source" software proprietary. Android OS seems to be a perfect example of that dictum in operation. While I do not want to see a completely closed eco system ala Apple, I do think that Google carries a big part of the blame for the mess that Android OS is in due to them not enforcing some sort of standardization across platforms.

 

[Sam Posten]

The genie is out of the bottle on that one I'm afraid.The big schism is that open source is a business plan, a philosophy, a weapon, a religion and more all rolled up in one. Like any tool it can be used the way it's originators planned but then used in ways they could never have forseen, let alone conroled.

 

[Hanson]

There are tradeoffs to everything. Fragmentation is the offspring of manufacturers and carriers striving for differentiation and control. Yet these forces gave rise to the ubiquity of Android as well as the integration of many great little ideas that have been folded into Android -- ideas so great that Apple starting cherry picking them for iOS. Most of the "innovations" of iOS since iOS5 have been Android features repurposed for the iPhone. Android would never have progressed as far and fast as it did if the entire OS were completely under Google's control. I see a great many people with Android phones and tablets who love them. These are "ordinary folks", not IT professionals. Some people here grossly overstate how much better the iOS experience is. Because of plusses and minuses to both, it's really a wash. Even with the horrors of... FRAGMENTATION!!!!!!!!!

 

[Edwin-S]

Well, my Android phone has always done what I needed it to do, but I also don't run a lot of apps. I find most apps are not very useful.

 

[RobertR]

More than two and a half years since the thread was started, and still no sign that Android is imploding or that people don't want to make apps for it. In fact, the number of Android apps when the thread was started was about 200,000, now it's over 1,000,000.

 

[Edwin-S]

I don't think anyone is saying that people don't want to make apps for Android; however, I do see that the fragmented nature of Android could lead to problems where a person buys an app and then finds out that it runs poorly or not at all because the developer optimized it for a particular phone or phones.

 

[RobertR]

I think there was an implication earlier in the thread that developers were going to be so turned off by "fragmentation issues" that it would inhibit them from developing apps. I'm just saying I don't see evidence of that.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Probably the only one who's totally unwilling to develop for Android is Apple (and TomTom I suppose), and that's probably got nothing to do w/ fragmentation.

Personally, I agree w/ Hanson (and have said this all along). There just aren't really that many apps that are truly worthwhile and must-have, IMHO. I have an iPad3, had a GS3 (and wife and son have GN2 and GS4), and now also an iPhone (from my company), and I don't really use that many different apps outside of the basics -- and pretty much all of them have decent-to-solid alternatives in both ecosystems.

For me, I'd still much rather go back to Android for the phone though the iPad is alright enough, so will not be replacing it w/ Android one (at least until it's dead or competely obsoleted) -- I'm actually more likely to just get the next, big Android phablet for myself than anything else, if I stop having a company smartphone, since I spend so much time in front of a PC or laptop anyway... Even w/ the IMHO less useful iPhone, I still don't use my iPad all that much anyway -- the family uses it more for (low-tech) games and such.

The one thing good about iPhone is my rather pricey Sennheiser i-headset is finally fully functional (w/ it) -- the mic was rendered useless on the old GS3 (and probably the new GS4 too)...

_Man_

 

[Sam Posten]

I think there was an implication earlier in the thread that developers were going to be so turned off by "fragmentation issues" that it would inhibit them from developing apps. I'm just saying I don't see evidence of that.

I agree, this was and remains my philosphy. The conensus seems to be the app gold rush is over for all of the ecosystems. Still, a considerable number of developers continue to have wide scale financial success on iOS and few seem to crow about similar good fortune on Android. iOS first continues to be the dominant strategy despite the much wider net that Android casts. If you've got data or even a few anecdotal examples to counter that I haven't seen any lately, at all.

But ultimately it hasn't been a cause of DOOM per se, but more of a drag.

I continue to believe that designers and developers with good taste (and consumers who value the output of that work) flock to iOS, and customers who value cheapness over taste and experience flock to Android. You can hate me for that belief but it comes with a metric ton of experience.

 

[Sam Posten]

Personally, I agree w/ Hanson (and have said this all along). There just aren't really that many apps that are truly worthwhile and must-have, IMHO. I have an iPad3, had a GS3 (and wife and son have GN2 and GS4), and now also an iPhone (from my company), and I don't really use that many different apps outside of the basics -- and pretty much all of them have decent-to-solid alternatives in both ecosystems.

_Man_

Good is the enemy of great =)

But that's key to the Android philosophy, isn't it? Cheap phones, cheap apps, get the basics out of the way and carry on. And millions will clearly buy that and not look back. And I don't say that that's wrong, clearly they are ok with those choices. The marketplace of people who demand excellent experiences is dwarfed by those willing to live with good enough.

But you can't have it both ways. There's plenty of examples of calls by those who want to have it all, just to give one example, look at how many people continue to scream for Tweetbot to come to Android. Or how many howl when a new app comes to iOS first. To get those quality experiences you can't surf on an army of cheapscates with little discerning taste. There's room for both, but I continue to believe there is not much chance of a happy middle. This is obviously ignoring things like customization and other areas where Android leads, (oh and monster handsets ). But that's a story for a different day.

 

[Sam Posten]

This is a timely reminder, we are not normal! =)
http://justinjackson.ca/we-are-not-normal-people/?utm_content=buffer495cb&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

I have referenced 'normal' people often and I truly try to put on my anthropologist hat and think how normal people will use stuff that lights up the geek centers in my brain. It's hard but you can do it!

 

[Hanson]

Just when I thought you had hit the trolling plateau, you surprise me and reach new heights! Bravo Sam!