Neil McAllister delves into the Android and iPhone SDKs to help sort out which will be the best bet for developers now that technical details of the first Android smartphone have been announced. Whereas the iPhone requires an Intel-based Mac running OS X 10.5.4 or later, ADC membership, and familiarity with proprietary Mac OS X dev tools, the standard IDE for Android is Eclipse. And because most tasks can be performed with command-line tools, you can expect third parties to develop Android SDK plug-ins for other IDEs. 'By just about any measure, Google's Android is more open and developer-friendly than the iPhone,' McAllister writes. This openness is essential to Android's prospects. 'Based on raw market share alone, the iPhone seems likely to remain the smartphone developer's platform of choice â" especially when ISVs can translate that market share into application sales,' McAllister writes. 'In this race, Apple is taking a page from Microsoft's book, while Google looks suspiciously like Linux.'
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Member since:2005-12-02
"You can chalk it up to opinion if you want, but I am an order of magnitude more productive on the iPhone than I am on Android, and I'm not the only one."
Okay, maybe I am just out of the loop. There are no Android phones out yet, the first one to be released at the end of October by T-Mobile, the G1. So how can you be more productive on something that does not exist yet? Serious question, as even on Android's web site it mentions there are no devices using it yet.
Member since:2007-09-06
You can get your own copy of Android and start being productive now even though specific phone hardware is not on the market. If it runs within Android, it should run on whatever hardware comes out. If you prefer, Android can be installed on the Nokia N810 so you can play with the OS and start running your own programs on top of it now.
Member since:2006-01-03
I've spent some time looking at both API's and doing a small project in each just to get a feel for the lay of the land. Yet I don't see the clear superiority of the iPhone SDK that you mention. The one thing I do see on the Google side is a lack of documentation, not that it's terrible, just that the iPhone SDK docs are a lot better.
I don't have enough experience in either to say one way or another but to me both appear to have strengths and weaknesses. Of course it may have something to do with the fact that I'm much more experienced as a Java developer than a Obj-C one. Could you give some examples of what you see as clear strengths of the iPhone SDK as opposed to the GPhone one?
Member since:2005-11-16
"Could you give some examples of what you see as clear strengths of the iPhone SDK as opposed to the GPhone one"
Well,
- Cocoa Touch
- Interface Builder (that's a big deal)
- Instruments
- Core Animation
- Quartz
- Core Audio
- Core Foundation
- Core Data
If you developed for Mac OS X, you should get the idea....
Member since:2007-09-06
Let Android and osX Micro stand out in the middle of the street and draw. I'm going to go place my money on Maemo with his 30x6 up on that roof top over there.
(sorry, I couldn't resist with the gun duelling analogy and since the article didn't provide much technical information...)
I would love to see the article redone on a purely technical basis including Android, iPhone and Maemo development pros and cons. Maybe a more inspired writer will happen past this humble post.
Member since:
2005-07-06
***
This is just an article about someone who doens't like obj-c and the NDA. Nothing about the SDKs and nothing that will help sort out which one is the best.
Indeed, but how exactly can you have a shootout when both Apple and Google throw NDAs everywhere?
Language politics aside (as quite frankly they all look the same to me), the APIs behind the iPhone are FAR superior to those behind Android. You can chalk it up to opinion if you want, but I am an order of magnitude more productive on the iPhone than I am on Android, and I'm not the only one.
I'd tell you more, but then they'd have to kill me.