mystilleef

gatorguy said:

tmay said:

gatorguy said:

tmay said:

dick applebaum said:

tallest skil said:

gatorguy said:

Here's what I suspect will be a surprising list of the Android enhancements t gethat have been made available in just the past four months, totally independent of any OS update and available to almost any Google Android user regardless of OS version.

So… even more massive fragmentation than anyone could have ever otherwise imagined. Because not only can’t you guarantee they have the newest #.0 release of Android, you can’t guarantee they have any of these supplemental updates, either. How long before Android starts needing installs of the 400 versions of DirectX to get things done? 

Good point, TS!

IDK how Android/Google handles matching their app store app installs to the Android version on the devise...

It appears that in iOS 11, the App Store won't [even] allow apps to be downloaded to an iDevice that does not have the requisite iOS version and hardware to run the app.

When Apple releases a new major iOS version, it is giving the developer an added set of tools, a spruced up workbench to use them on, a roadmap of deprecated devices and the rules by which supported devices will be able to use the new tools. Apple also updates old apps and provides some new ones that may or may not be dependent on the new toolset. Apple provides this yearly, for the most part, and also provides updates and enhancements in-between major releases as appropriate. It is relatively straightforward for both user and developer to differentiate support by app and by OS version.

Whatever benefits updating apps incrementally in old and deprecated OS versions is for Google and the user, it is, for the most part, a fragmented mess for developers, and likely the reason that develop first on iOS is a thing

I don't recall you mentioning that you are a developer. I think I do remember an actual developer saying that what you supposed is a big issue really isn't. But I could be wrong. If I am I'm sure a developer will chime in here pretty soon and say so. 

I welcome any comments, from any of the millions of  developers out there, your anecdote being a single data point.

Here's a link; there are plenty of others. 

https://theappsolutions.com/blog/development/ios-vs-android/

Oh I agree with you. I just can't remember which one of our members has posted a few times that he develops for both IOS and Android. In the meantime here's another "Data point" that says it's not all that difficult to develop for Android in addition to iOS.
https://thenewstack.io/scoring-comparison-android-ios-development/

Sure it probably is easier for iOS, but I still stand by my comment that it's not too much more effort to do Android (too) according to what I've read both here and on other sites. But like you I don't speak from personal knowledge. 

From the perspective of a developer, there's no fragmentation on Android at all.

I recommend some of the folks on this thread familiarize themselves with this thing called the Google Play Services and Android Support Libraries. Between those two frameworks, an Android developer can write an app targeting the latest version of Android while being seamlessly backward compatible all the way back to Android Gingerbread (Android 2.0). In other words, Android developers that plug their apps into those frameworks, with virtually zero effort, automagically support 90% of Android devices out there. 

The folks that crow about Android's fragmentation are not only clueless, they are drunk on Apple's marketing Koolaid. Google over the years sneakily and systematically decoupled core Android and Google frameworks, interfaces, and services from the OS. The result is that today these parts of the OS are regularly updated independently of the OS. 

From day one, Google was smart enough to ensure that on Android developers wrote strictly to an interface and not hard-coded assumptions about screen size, processor architecture, form factor and so on. The benefit of this architecture decision is that a well-designed Android app, sourced from a single source code, can run flawlessly on a multitude of devices regardless of screen size, SoC architecture, form-factor, or hardware configuration.

The caveat, of course, is that the developer must make no assumptions about the environment or device the app is going to run on. This is very important because it leads to my next point. (Exception: Android APIs that are not properly abstracted from low-level hardware specific stuff will give inexperienced developers headaches. The Camera API comes to mind.)  

For an iOS developer delving into Android development, this is a massive cultural shock. On iOS, hard-coded assumptions about everything has been the norm until very recently. Therefore, it's no surprise the many iOS developers find Android development overwhelming. I've read too many ill-informed rants on blogs entertaining the misguided notion that Android developers have to tune to their code for every type of Android device. This forms the foundation of the Android fragmentation theory. The theory gains legs when you add the reality that for numerous unfortunate reasons Android updates on none-Google Android devices are unreliable. Connect the dots sloppily, and you can make a convincing argument that it's a waste of time to support new OS features because FRAGMENTATION.

Apple, through ingenious marketing, has perpetuated this baseless argument. The tech media, practically Apple's echo chamber, hardly needed any incentives to help birth and nurture the myth of Android fragmentation. The comments in this thread alone bear witness to this fallacy. It's the same regurgitated PR nonsense that has no bearing on reality.

If you pick up a phone running Android 4.0 and another one running Android 8.0, you'd hardly notice any difference worth talking about. There might be minor tweaks and superficial enhancements here and there. But for the most part, the experience using either device is largely the same. The compatibility shim in Google Play Services and Android Support Libraries ensure that apps don't behave any differently on Android 4.0 versus 8.0.

This is the miracle of Android. It's a feat of engineering that any this even works.

With Android O, Google takes Android another giant leap towards world domination. Not surprisingly, the tech media is too preoccupied debating dessert names, as opposed to, I don't know, documenting a well-research exposition about the fact that Android O is the most significant update to the platform since its birth. With Project Treble, Google rearchitected Android's gut to make its core components independently deployable. The goal is to push OS updates to any Android user, regardless of device, carrier, OEM, skin, or silicon. It's the last piece of the puzzle in making Android completely modular. This new-found flexibility will allow Google to develop Android independent of OEMs, Vendors, and Carriers. It won't surprise me if Android P or Q doesn't even run on Linux, but instead Fuschia, Google experimental OS.

gatorguy is right. Android and iOS are fundamentally different OSes. One OS has to cater to every conceivable use case while remaining open, flexible and customizable, the other has to cater to Apple. Anybody claiming Google and Apple face the same challenges in how they manage, design, and deploy their respective OSes, is simply entertaining a false equivalence. 

The engineering challenge for Google is monumental given the inconceivable amount of variables they have to deal with, as well as the ubiquity and heterogeneity of devices that Android has to run on. The debates about update percentages are pointless in light of the fact that each OS is layered, designed, and deployed differently. Wake me up when Apple can push iOS updates to 24,000 unique devices with disparate SoCs, form factors, and hardware architectures. Then we can have a serious talk about iOS vs Android updates. Until then, enjoy your penis wagging contest.

WWDC is not going to be about the iPhone, or iPad, or Mac, or the Apple Watch.

It better not be!

WWDC is going to be a referendum on where Apple stands in relation to Google with respect to Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.

This is the conversation Google is forcing everyone to have, ready or not. And it's a conversation Apple would rather not have.

The future isn't the iPhone, or iPad, or the Mac, or Apple Watch, or any iDevice. Google made all those devices irrelevant at I/O 2017.

The future is AI that is ambient and pervasive.

And Apple's sole job at WWDC is to convince us that it can remain relevant in that future.

Note to the Author: Tensor Flow models can run locally on mobile and IoT devices. In fact, Google already runs Tensor Flow on some Android devices. They use it in GBoard for example.