Comments on: The One-tablet Tablet Market – For Now. http://blog.grouplogic.com/?p=66 Fri, 27 Jan 2012 01:48:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Anders Lofgren http://blog.grouplogic.com/?p=66&cpage=1#comment-55 Anders Lofgren Fri, 24 Jun 2011 19:09:05 +0000 http://blog.grouplogic.com/?p=66#comment-55 Thanks for your comments. I agree it will be some time before Apple gives up this lead and I am sure they will be working hard to keep it. Still having competition would benefit all of us (as consumers and enterprises) but the competition is playing catchup as you note. re: Android, that mirrors some of the same things we have heard as well. At some point Android has to come together and make it easier for developers. Without a solid base of apps it will be tough sledding. It is just easier and more cost-effective to develop for iOS. Thanks for your comments. I agree it will be some time before Apple gives up this lead and I am sure they will be working hard to keep it. Still having competition would benefit all of us (as consumers and enterprises) but the competition is playing catchup as you note. re: Android, that mirrors some of the same things we have heard as well. At some point Android has to come together and make it easier for developers. Without a solid base of apps it will be tough sledding. It is just easier and more cost-effective to develop for iOS.

]]> By: Douglas Hill http://blog.grouplogic.com/?p=66&cpage=1#comment-54 Douglas Hill Fri, 24 Jun 2011 16:21:01 +0000 http://blog.grouplogic.com/?p=66#comment-54 I agree with you Mr. Lofgren, iOS is, and will remain, the dominant tablet for some time to come. Speaking as a mobile developer (Android and iOS), I think using "competition" when referring to the PlayBook and the Android tablets is being pretty generous. As a user, their user experience pales in comparison to iOS - and that's before we get the cloud integration w/ iCloud. The application base is almost non-existent and what apps. there are, are generally of poor quality in my experience. ES File Explorer not withstanding. Apple is on it's second generation of devices while the so-called competition is still playing catch up with their first iterations. As a developer, working on Android is a complete mess. Vendors delay updating to the latest OS versions (which are many) because of their customization of the OS. My Droid X only recently received an OTA update to 2.3. My Nexus One is still back on 2.2. This increases the testing burden by orders of magnitude compared to iOS. The sheer number of devices crossed with the number of OS versions you must support makes for a large testing matrix. Support for writing native code is there but doesn't support major chunks of the C++ language like templates and STL. One more hoop for the Android developer to jump through. As for PlayBook, as many reviewers have already said, the it is a half-baked piece of hardware that was shipped too soon. Forget developing for the device if you want to do anything but a web-app that runs in the browser, e.g. Abode Air. The SDK is still in beta the last time I looked and I don't think I've seen mention of an NDK. Given all the negatives of the other platforms, I think Apple has a nice lead in the tablet space - a lead I'm sure they are not looking to give up... [insert standard boilerplate about this being my own thoughts and not those of MSTR] I agree with you Mr. Lofgren, iOS is, and will remain, the dominant tablet for some time to come.

Speaking as a mobile developer (Android and iOS), I think using “competition” when referring to the PlayBook and the Android tablets is being pretty generous.

As a user, their user experience pales in comparison to iOS – and that’s before we get the cloud integration w/ iCloud. The application base is almost non-existent and what apps. there are, are generally of poor quality in my experience. ES File Explorer not withstanding. Apple is on it’s second generation of devices while the so-called competition is still playing catch up with their first iterations.

As a developer, working on Android is a complete mess. Vendors delay updating to the latest OS versions (which are many) because of their customization of the OS. My Droid X only recently received an OTA update to 2.3. My Nexus One is still back on 2.2. This increases the testing burden by orders of magnitude compared to iOS. The sheer number of devices crossed with the number of OS versions you must support makes for a large testing matrix.

Support for writing native code is there but doesn’t support major chunks of the C++ language like templates and STL. One more hoop for the Android developer to jump through.

As for PlayBook, as many reviewers have already said, the it is a half-baked piece of hardware that was shipped too soon. Forget developing for the device if you want to do anything but a web-app that runs in the browser, e.g. Abode Air. The SDK is still in beta the last time I looked and I don’t think I’ve seen mention of an NDK.

Given all the negatives of the other platforms, I think Apple has a nice lead in the tablet space – a lead I’m sure they are not looking to give up…

[insert standard boilerplate about this being my own thoughts and not those of MSTR]

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