Android vs. iPhone: Which Is The Better Bet for Developers?
If you’re a mobile application developer, where should you be playing your chips — on Apple’s side of the table or Google’s?
That’s the question Neil McAllister tackles in his SDK Shoot-out over at InfoWorld. It’s a thought-provoking read.
McAllister attests that the toolchain plays a big part in the decision. To build an iPhone app, you have to have an Intel Mac, you have to have iTunes and you must use Apple’s proprietary coding tools. For Android development, you can use Eclipse, you can use a command line or you can hack Android’s development tools into the IDE of your choice. It’s a logical argument: all other things being equal, a cross-platform and open environment is better than a proprietary environment.
It’s actually disingenuous to call the piece an “SDK shoot-out.” It makes a great headline, but one thing the article does not do is present any critique about which platform is easier to create applications for. Eclipse, XCode, Java and Objective-C all have their strengths and weaknesses that go beyond what kind of hardware you’re running. However, as one commenter on the Slashdot discussion of this story argues, the SDK is a moot point — as long as Apple continues its baffling practices of banning some third-party apps for duplicating functionality on the iPhone (while letting others slide) and extending its non-disclosure agreements to even forbid software makers from telling their paying customers what happened, developing for the iPhone is still a risk and should be avoided.
The Slashdotter makes a strong case for being careful, but if the object is making money, only a fool would ditch the iPhone in favor of Android right now.
The iPhone is the glamor device of the year, and it likely will be for some time. That’s where all the energy and excitement are in mobile apps. People are paying good money for their iPhone apps. Also, both the iPhone and the App Store are tied to iTunes, the most successful online digital marketplace we’ve ever seen.
But as the Android phones start rolling out, and as the Android Market ramps up, what kinds of opportunities will that ecosystem provide? I’ll tell you for sure as soon as I find my Magic 8-Ball.
For now, we can extend that question beyond the money-making part. Will developers get as excited about the Google Phone as they are about the iPhone? Will there be as much of a rush to make an Android version of Facebook? Yelp? eBay? WordPress? I raced to install every one of those apps on my iPhone as soon as they were available. Is Google ever going to be able to duplicate that level of anticipation among its users?
It’s a total longshot, 10-to-1 odds. The first iteration of the Android phone isn’t nearly as sexy as the first iPhone was. We can expect it to get better. As the code branches out across different devices, things will get more interesting. But from what we’ve seen so far, it’s just another phone with a touch screen that doesn’t work with iTunes. We shouldn’t expect it to win.
I try not to get caught up in FOSS politics or the business of software development too often. Foremost, I’m a user — one who is still amazed that I have the internet in my pocket. Whether it’s an Apple thingy or an Android thingy that I use to access it doesn’t matter much. Which ever device provides me with the best experience is the device I will use.
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