Interview with Wired Magazine ~ Don’t be Discouraged Developers!
Chris Pick and I had the opportunity to participate in an interview with Priya Ganapati from Wired magazine late last week regarding fragmentation in the android marketplace. Priya did a phenomenal job writing the piece, but after reading it I could see how some may take our point of view regarding android out of context. So, I thought I’d provide a bit more context here.
First off, we are not anti-android and by no means do we want to intimidate others from getting involved in android mobile application development. We were very early adopters of the platform and we’ve been with android every step of the way. This experience has given us great perspective and because of this we know google will continue to deliver the best in class, most robust feature rich mobile operating system. This isn’t opinion, this is fact…. compare android side by side with every other mobile OS and you’ll see distinguishing factors. I won’t go into them now, plenty of other non-biased sites can provide this info. Some may prefer other OS’s over android which is fine, but I’ve yet to see a comparable feature set on any other OS. Android = good.
But, the reality is with growth comes growing pains. Android is gone from two HTC devices running on one U.S. carrier to seven devices (motorola, samsung, HTC) running on the 3 out of the 4 largest networks in the U.S. in a VERY short amount of time. This has provided a lot of flavor for android enthusiasts. Henry Ford once said you can have whatever color of model T you want, as long as it’s black. That approach worked for a short while, but eventually consumers wanted options! Android provides option in mobile space and that’s what’s so great about the android platform. You can develop one application that is supported regardless of device type and network! But, to do so you have to play by the rules. Developers need to follow androids dev guidelines by setting the appropriate API levels, and supporting multiple screen layouts. Carriers need minimize edits to firmware to support customized ROM’s. Keep in mind I’m not talking about look and feel, I’m talking about how the fundamental API’s etc should work on their said devices. I seriously doubt carriers and OEM’s ever intend on breaking apps due to custom ROM’s, but obviously it happens. My ask is for google to provide a more rigorous quality control process for approving custom ROM’s. I’m sure there’s a process in place today and now it’s just a matter of fine tuning it.
In closing, I’d like to reiterate that if you’re an existing android developer or a new android developer interested in making apps for android DO NOT BE DISCOURAGED! In our humble opinion, the benefits far outweigh the cons. 2010 is going to be fantastic year for android!
Link to Wired.com Android Article
~ Team Froogloid
