By In response to Steve Jobs pointing out the “nightmares” developers have to face when it comes to Android’s “fragmentation,” TweetDeck’s Iain Dodsworth essentially responds “what in god’s name are you talking about?” What he actually said was this.
“Did we at any point say it was a nightmare developing on Android? errr nope, no we didn’t. It wasn’t.”
And responding to a tweet by one user – Danny Sullivan – regarding how much of a non-issue it was to “deal” with Android’s fragmentation, he says:
“… yes exactly! We only have 2 guys developing on Android TweetDeck so that shows how small an issue fragmentation is”
And that just brings us right back to our initial point: Steve Jobs simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He knows nothing outside of iOS, Mac, and iTunes. Why pretend as if you do? If Google can’t seem to open your eyes, then perhaps unbiased multi-platform developers will be able to.
TweetDeck for Android is one of the best Twitter experiences we’ve seen on the platform so far, and its two developers had no problems getting it up in a timely and elegant fashion. (We all remember how fast the beta was being updated.) Thanks for shooting yourself in the foot trying to use TweetDeck’s data, Jobs. Now please proceed to insert that bloody foot well into your mouth.
PS: We’ll probably slow down on posting the onslaught of reports that makes everything Jobs said yesterday null and void, after this, but if anything else turns up, we’ll be continuing the flogging at our Twitter account!
Show me the fragmentation on the iOS platform. I know people that haven’t synced their iPhone with their computer in over 2 years. They’re certainly not running iOS newer than 2.
Jobs is full of s***!
I hate Apple, you hate Apple. But please, stop being hateful in your posts, try to be more polite, I know Jobs is bad and stuff but you’re seem to try to be worse than him.
I don’t understand what you’re trying to say Chaz. This article is an example of developers saying that android fragmentation isn’t as much of an issue for developers as Jobs makes it out to be. What would showing fragmentation on the iOS platform prove?
oh i hate steve jobs so much!!!
What an F’ing iHole !!!
jobs is just getting fed information from sources and all the people who do the research for him and then doesn’t know what to say if he has some rebut him.
iOS is so hard to develope for….trust me, I’ve tried to do it and failed at it. Android is a lot easier than you would ever consider. Just look at the code, watch it and read it and then you can pretty much get the hang of it from there.
Anyways, jobs is a moron.
He’s just getting pissed because the figures came out yesterday showing that 97% of all searches on the iPhone are done using Google. That’s more then on the PC. Bottom line, people use Android, Google makes money. People use iPhone, Google makes money.
i think TeetDeck can be done with only one developer as well….
it’s not SO big app
@rzrshrp – what @Chaz was saying is: Steve Jobs rants about the fragmentation on Android, but the same issues are present in iOS as people simply do not update their iPhones.
Personally I think the whole argument is petty, Mr Jobs clearly doesn’t have a lot that he is able to pick at on our community supported OS.
If fragmentation isn’t an issue, why doesn’t Tweetdeck run on my less than 6 month old LG android phone? Oh yeah, because it’s using the wrong version of android.
Damn fragmentation.
Jobs is trying the ‘if keep saying it, people will start to believe it’ approach. It works in media/politics, so why not try it to convince your customers/developers that the competition is just too complicated.
The thing is, fragmentation is why Android is so nice. The average consumer wouldn’t know Android 2.0 from 2.2. They just surf the web, download a few apps, and use the phone. It’s the power users that care. If fragmentation means I can choose between varying form factors (i.e. keyboard or no physical keyboard), varying manufacturers (Motorola, HTC, Samsung, etc etc), varying overlays (Sense UI, Samsung’s overlay, MotoBlur, etc) then I say more power to fragmentation. Not all of us fit into a one-size-fits-all category. I enjoy whipping my phone out and realzing that no one at my lunch/meeting/etc has my phone. Most of them have iPhones that all look EXACTLY alike.
I’m with you derrick!
When I first got my Hero, no-one had the same phone as me, and I only knew 2 people with android phones about 4/5 months later. Now however, at least half the people I know have Android phones – none of them I’d really say are power users, but they’ve been convinced into buying them due to the originality in having a different model of phone with a different skin, rather than the same iPhone shell, same iOS.
That’s the great thing about Android and the ‘fragmentation’ of the OS. The skins suit different tastes, they can be adapted to different devices, to suit different people and the purpose they use the phone for. Perfect example is I use LauncherPro on my Hero, because I love customising anything I have, which LP allows me to do! My device is completely unique, and I’ve customised it to make everything easy to access with minimal screen clutter.
On the other end of the scale, a family member bought the Xperia X10 Mini, simply because she was looking to buy a small phone, that had some features, but would mostly just be a phone. The X10 Mini’s interface is perfect for the tiny screen and suits someone who simply wants a small phone!
If you want a phone with the iOS – you have to buy an iPhone. No other choice. In fact, that shows how closed the iOS is. It’s even limited to the device. Android is all over the place, a universal OS for multiple purposes.
Basically, Jobs needs to fnd some better arguments against Android being open and iOS not, because right now, he just sounds sad and desperate.
@King of the Sea
I assume you’re talking about the LG Eris and while you may have bought it 6 months ago it was released well over a year before that. I’m sure you got a pretty sweet deal on it as they were trying to push the last ones out the door, but you get what you pay for so don’t expect it to be state-of-the-art. If you didn’t know the end of support date was year, that’s your own fault.
I would love better tools tho. I think Eclipse is horrible compared to Microsoft Visual Studio.
Apple? what tools do they even use?
@ Derrick “I enjoy whipping my phone out and realzing that no one at my lunch/meeting/etc has my phone. Most of them have iPhones that all look EXACTLY alike.”
Exactly, most people don’t care what OS or about customizing their phone. Just how fast it is and what they can do and this is why the average user will pick Iphone the majority of the time. I have a samsung galaxy s and it work right out the box gps and all but now I am very, extremely unhappy with it. Because, 1 – the fragmentation – there are app out now that will not work unless i have 2.2, 2- all the choice, everytime I think i got it exactly how I want it something comes along or I notice performance or astectics issue and I will spend hours trying to get it just the way I want again. And, the longer i use it, even after rooting it to 2,2 the more I am unhappy with it. But I am more technically incline than alot of my friends and family. My wife has the galaxy s and couldn’t be happier because she don’t care about os, open vs closed, apple vs android. She just want something fast and work.
My brothers and sisters have an iphone 4 w/o any issue and after wife use it for a few day NOW she notice how slow and clunky her galaxy is and want an iphone. IPhone is just more smooother and more responsive as perceive by the average user. From my own personal experience and not talking about graph and study, people seem to be happier with iphone the longer they have it and less happy with android the longer they have it.
For me, waiting for WP7 and see if it better. Gave android a try, and no one I know that has it is very happy with it. Android seem like a fade to me, it just good enough until something else comes along.
In stage magic, politics or business, it’s the same: when someone insists you look closely at the other guy it’s because he doesn’t want you looking too closely at him. It’s simple misdirection. — If an app doesn’t work across multiple platforms it’s almost always for one of two reasons: it requires a minimum release level due to critical functionality not existing in the platform prior, or it’s simply poorly written. Most fall into the latter category. It’s not particularly difficult to run alternate code segments based on the android version level. All it takes is to design the code so that you isolate the OS version specific code. It’s engineering, but not rocket science. — @NYBX, most people hwo have the iPhone have it not because it’s fast and what it can do, it’s because it was the “cool phone” to have. It’s fashion, not function.
First, I believe Jobs doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
However, it appears that one way to get around the fragmentation problem is to simply not write apps for the older versions of Android, which is the case here. I can’t use TweetDeck because my Cliq is still on Android 1.5, grrr!
@ NYBX
I’ve had android since the G1 first came out, and I’m very happy with it. I’m willing to bet most people on this site will feel similarly. iPhone is definitely easier to understand, but there are just so many things it doesn’t do. Sure, the average phone user prefers something simpler and more responsive, but the average phone user rarely wants/needs a smartphone. When they do, iPhone is often the right choice for them. However, Android is basically a little computer in your pocket, and if you want a device that simply does everything it’s the obvious choice. If you want a device that responds more smoothly at the expense of some limited capabilities, then iPhone is the obvious choice. I don’t necessarily feel that one OS is naturally superior to another. It’s just a matter of what you’re looking for in a smartphone. I just really hate it when people bash one and ignore its strong points in order to make their favorite look superior. It’s bad logic.
No one I have ever known got it cause it was cool. They got it because it did what they need. And as for cool, HTC evo is probably the coolest right now (again this is from personal experience). The Samsung vibrant is my first smart phone, before last year it was mostly feature phone. Now we are considering smartphone because there is more choices and giving all the choices my family and our company still prefer iphone. Had to really work hard to convince everyone to go the android route. Waiting on WP7 to test it out as well.
I am focus on average user here and not mod community or app community. How many people willing to root their phone or have access to someone to help? And why do we even need to go to that trouble, a phone should work as do what we want right out of the box. I don’t care and do not for a moment believe that apple Ios or google android is better or worse. And beside these 2 there are still other choices, such as WP7, meego, even webos and RIMM.
@Thomas The Droid Eris is by HTC… LG made the Ally.. but the Ally I believe runs 2.1 and should be able to run Tweetdeck. And JUST FYI the Droid 1 and ERIS both came out on the same day I believe November 29th.. Android phones on Verizon have yet to be there for a year! so epic fail on your post!
Steve Job’s comments remind me a little of his and Apple’s misguided approach in the early years of the Macintosh in the late 80s to mid 90s. Again, Apple is telling me that it knows what I need and I should not have to make a choice. Steve Job’s and his design teams approach is to tell me what I need in a phone.
Android and it’s many different flavors in both OS and variety of handset allows me, the informed (or maybe not so informed) user make my own decisions on what I need out of my phone.
It just shows what a pathetic crybaby he is, and now needs to manufacture lies about Android to keep his fanboy base. Nice job, Jobs…doofus.
Some people want a phone with a screen larger than 3.5″. Some prefer a 4.3″ TFT LCD screen… or a 4″ Super AMOLED screen. Some want a touchscreen phone with a slide-out keyboard. Some people like infinite possibilities when customizing their phone’s UI. Some like to keep a spare battery around for when their phone dies… and like replaceable and upgradeable SD cards.
Sure, android is fragmented…. but it gives you choice and freedom.
Apple has its own fragmentation problem for iOS. They have two different screen sizes (3 if you included iPhone 4 retina display). I think SJ bashed 7″ tablets because Apple would be embarrassed to ask developers to code for another screen size, bigger than iPhone, but smaller than iPad.
Android, on the other hand, was designed for handle varying screen sizes. The apps I write scale to larger and smaller screen sizes without any code rework.
@ NYBX, I am shocked by your “no one I know bought the Iphone just because it was cool…” you definetly do not work in the cellular industry as I can tell you the massive majority of Iphone users do not even know half of the things an Iphone can/cannot do.
There’s better phones for messaging, MUCH better phones for calls/reception, better phones for email, better phones for browsing. The only thing there’s more of on the Iphone is Apps. So I suppose if you want to pay more for the phone, then pay more for apps then yes the Iphone is the way to go…
How did TweetDeck manage to test on all 244 android devices? Other than purhcasing every single handset (which I doubt) it appears to be that TweetDeck said they had no problem developing with just two people because they didn’t bother testing it beyond a few handsets. In that respect i guess fragmentation isn’t an issue for them. I tried it on my older Cliq and of course it failed…sounds like a fragmentaion issue to me but obviously not for TweetDeck!
I personally still use an iphone 3gs( especially because I bought apps worth £s for it) and people really need to stop with the misinformation! since ios4 it lags sometime, it crashes with a springboard message and so on it has its own issues!
Job speaks about fragmentation? my girlfriend has the 3g and ios4 is awful on it, I won’t even talk about the fact some apps not working on it!
The iphone 3g doesn’t record video why?
no bluetooth file transfer why?
no hardrive mode why?
I bought it why can I use it the way I want?
my iphone 3gs record videos but I can’t use imovie on it, why ?knowing I have the same OS as the iphone 4?
Apple only have 4 devices, they dropped support for one already, so they have only 3 devices and they are struggling with fragmentation. may be that’s why they try to point at google before google does, a bit like “the best defence is attacking ”
Instead of looking inside the nose of google, they’d better fix their own issues, because competition is there! from what I see android loaded devices are more and ore powerful, and also more and more customisable and I’m more and more tempted by one when I hear those kind of cocky comment from job.
It is a bit like when my brother with his antenna problems on IPHONE4 was waiting to get it fix, and Job was saying there was nothing wrong, then you shouldn’t hold it this way anyway, then the competitors phone also has antena issues, and finally gave him a free bumper he already bought by then! I bought an IPHONE not a htc or a MOTO and when it has a problem I want an answer and a fix not a comparaison!
But he has a point on 7″ tablets
Hmmmm, Android Fan, you’re obviously not… Would you take Windows 7 and install it on your old 386sx and expect it to work? It’s not fragmentation, it’s just Jobs attempting to mindlessly influence his kool-aid drinking followers who can’t READ and LEARN about the issues for themselves. Same reason why he spoke about ad revenue on the iPad rather than the iPhone, which Android is now exceeding Apple at, lol, you gotta love this stuff.
–
Anyway, it’s amusing to see Jobs and his hysteria regarding the Android platform, great entertainment for sure!
–
Regards!
I see! Finally I understood why TweetDeck is running as a nightmare on Mac and iPhone.
Maybe TweetDeck should have added a third developer to ensure this buggy app didn’t crash twice a day and cut the battery life of my HTC Incredible in half. It might not have been a nightmare for them, but it became one for me.