BBC dismisses complaint from Android whiners about iOS favo(u)ritism | Hacker News Reader

BBC dismisses complaint from Android whiners about iOS favo(u)ritism

marco.org

10 pointsshawndumas12 comments

This post summarises everything you need to know about Marco Arment and his entire blog. End to end trollbait and best avoided.

That said: I can see why BBC subscribers who pay with their tax dollars are unhappy about seeing their tax-dollars invested in closed, proprietary solutions and ecosystems, while the open counter-parts remain ignored.

It doesn't hold water logically and it is against the contract on which BBC is funded.

As far as I've understood it, the BBC isn't ignoring Android, the rollout of new features is simply delayed for a platform that's logistically significantly more complex to roll out multi-device supporting apps too.

Also, I'm not too sure about it being against the BBC's 'contract', could you let me know what you're referring to? As far as I'm aware the BBC has no legislative or regulatory duty to favour open platforms.

The content the BBC produces should be open and accessible to the British tax-paying public. Plain and simple.

Preferring to provide that content via locked down, proprietary solutions with DRM and god knows what over simple and open solutions would definitely go against that contract.

I agree with you, it SHOULD be open, but there's nothing in the BBC's CURRENT public service charter that would MANDATE it to give preference to open-source eco-systems/platforms. As I said, I happen to agree with you: it SHOULD read that. But it currently doesn't, as far as I'm aware.

Going back to the original point, it's not been suggested this is a POLICY decision on the part of the BBC to prefer one platform over the other (be it open or closed) but rather a pragmatic one based on the technical/test complexity of developing for the Android platform (and supporting MANY devices on it). I can personally attest to this last fact, as anyone can who has built cross-platform native mobile apps.

Well executed trollbait, you have to give credit to that.

To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if there was any preference to the platform. The marketshare of iOS is 25% and Android is 38%[1]. In that 25% almost all iOS users have a consistent screen size, DPI and even OS version. Any changes (think of Retina display in iOS 4), the OS handles transparently. The fragmentation of Android makes it a lot more work to support. Additionally, there's only one store; The App Store. Android has Google Play, Amazon's Store and possibly a dozen more.

iOS in my opinion has much richer tools (Xcode, Instruments, Simulator) to develop with too. I should point out as an iOS developer, I don't exactly have extensive knowledge of Android. If there are rich tools to deal with fragmentation in a seamless way, please let me know. I'd be interested to see how it stacks up to developing for iOS.

I can only speak anecdotally about iOS vs Android but I'm preparing to launch a startup this summer, we're going to have an iOS app but not an Android app until later this year. The primary reason would be we're extremely limited for time and money and the last thing we need is testing the app on 50 different phones just to find the UI doesn't fit on some of them and the performance is sub-par on some. What a pain. Our testing is conducted entirely on our personal iPhones (2x iPhone 5, 1x iPhone 4) along with the simulator and that works out as completely sufficient. The experience we get in the palm of our hands is guaranteed to be almost identical to potentially millions of users.

I can see why there would possibly be a preference. It's a dream to develop for this platform.

[1] http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-monthly-201205-20130...

Feel proud about your stance. You are in good company. I'm sure people said the very same thing as they made 1024x768 MSIE-only websites.

You can hardly say iOS supports only one resolution now can you? Thing is - Apple dictates certain limitations AND provides the tools and api's to make it more convenient to support those different resolutions and dpi.

On Android you not only have to worry about resolution and dpi, which you could do on simulators, but you also have to take into account which display technology is used. Text on pentile displays can look horrible on the real device, while looking perfect on the "same resolution" in a simulator (real world story here).

That and designing a good UI which's size is dictated by an unpredictable aspect ratio, size (resolution + DPI) is bloody hard. Just look at the total lack of tablet apps for Android.

So yes, if a developer pours the same effort into an Android app as it does in an iOS app, you get poor results. Welcome to the real world.

We want to break into Android as soon as we can but right now there's a lower barrier to entry for iOS apps regarding testing & development. It's also convenient we happened to have Macs to develop on. If we were using Windows or Linux, we'd likely be developing for Windows Phone and Android.

As for "1024x768 MSIE-only websites", while that's a great analogy, I should point out the entire web is "unpredictable" like that; everyone has a different resolution, browser and OS where as iOS is fixed which is what makes it attractive to develop for in this circumstance. When IE had 90% marketshare I'm sure plenty of people developed using it's specific APIs. What would you rather have done?

Incase your interested, our website is an HTML 5 responsive site that requires IE 8+.

The Register is hiring?

As a licence fee payer, I object to the BBC taking my money and favouring proprietary platforms. They bend over forwards to work with and on DRM-encumbered platforms, so they're no strangers to "complexity".

So the BBC using DRM-encumbered video-streams is perfectly ok with you? :)

I think there are two things to be considered here

* Marco experimented with Instapaper. Many people (or a few vocal people) were asking for ages for an Android client for Instapaper. When it was released, sales were disappointing (or at least not what expected).

* BBC develops for iOS first, as it seems that it takes less time.

Out of these two pieces, Marco says what he will do as an (indie) iOS developers, not as a BBC employee or consultant. He doesn't say BBC should not develop for Android.

All these issues about open/closed, do not exist if you cannot pay the bills. It seems like he couldn't had he been actively developing for Android besides iOS. I think he has a point.

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