“Stitcher Radio, one of the most popular news, radio and podcast apps on Android recently underwent a complete redesign. Lead Android developer at Stitcher, Tyler Pearson, was kind enough to take some time out of his day after the launch of the new app to talk to us. We had a chance to (virtually) sit down and talk to Tyler about their newly redesigned Android app, Google design guidelines and the state of the Android ecosystem.” The rate at which Android applications improve thanks to Holo and Google’s guidelines is astonishing. There’s more and better Holo applications every day, and my self-professed credo to only install Holo applications – ‘Holo or nono’ – requires zero effort these days. That nonsense about Android applications being inferior to those of other platforms? A bunch of outdated nonsense.
Without that link, this is just 30 seconds of worthless piffle.
It’s great that there are 3 official Holo themes: light, dark, hybrid.
It really sucks donkey balls that end-users are not able to select which theme they want to use (preferably, system-wide) . And it sucks gasoline-soaked donkey balls that Google’s own apps don’t let you select the theme.
For example, Google Reader comes in Holo Light only. Google Mail comes in Holo Light only. Who wants to read black text on white screen, especially at night?
Holo is nice. But it would be better if the theming were selectable.
HOLO YOLO?
Join us, Thom:http://www.reddit.com/r/Androidcirclejerk
Maybe I’m missing something but I think calling this interface Holo is a stretch. For example the non-Holo grid list in screen 2 (“browse shows”), scrollable tabs, incorrectly sized top bar, incorrect spacing between elements, and the odd frame around detail view in screen 4.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a decent looking application. But, it would look much cleaner looking if they wouldn’t have deviated on such standard elements.
Apparently a huge amount of the reason that iOS development is quicker than Android development is DRM and video codec support. With iOS this is really convenient, whereas with Android there are several different types of hardware out there with various levels of support.
The hardware is probably a reason why Android 4.x still hasn’t gained traction: The older phone simply cannot support the new Android. Hopefully this will change in the next year or so, when even cheap smartphones are Jelly-bean capable.
I believe a second part is of iOS being what I’m calling a “designer’s ghetto”. All the guys who loved Flash and couldn’t do proper web design left and went to iOS, where they’re all there making visually pretty but inconsistent and stupid experimental UIs. Android works a lot like the web, where you don’t control the exact layout of your app, rather the general “vibe” of it. Smart designers are going to be able to thrive in this environment. Unfortunately, the tooling still isn’t up to scratch.
Hopefully when designers actually get off their arse and start designing as opposed to crapping on about how important their job is, we’ll end up with better apps eventually.