Not so much… Article from Wired.com
Android’s Rapid Growth Has Some Developers Worried
A year after its release, Google’s open source Android operating system has become a sensation. After a slow start, it is now available on at least 12 phones, with more devices waiting in the wings.
Good news for Android fans, right? Not really, say some developers. A slew of problems have made managing Android apps a “nightmare,” they say, including three versions of the OS (Android 1.5, 1.6 and 2.0), custom firmware on many phones, and hardware differences between different models.
For users, it means apps in the store could be buggy, might not work well depending on their handsets, and could deliver a frustrating experience. Unaware of the increasing back-end complexity, they would then be more likely to leave bad reviews for those apps — a potentially lethal blow for small businesses, say developers.
“Instead of working on updates to our apps, we find we are trying to make each app work for multiple versions of the OS and different hardware capabilities,” says Chris Fagan, co-founder at Froogloid, an Android focused application development company. “We are not complaining about all the growth, but if you are a small or a new Android developer coming in and trying to learn I could see your head exploding. It would be overwhelming,” he says.
The problem echoes similar concerns over Java in the 1990s. Originally touted as a way for developers to build apps that would run on any computer (”write once, run anywhere”), developers found that wide variations in Java virtual machines as well as available hardware meant that Java’s promise was really “write once, debug everywhere.” While Java is still used — particularly in the mobile space, where it powers games and other apps written for Java-capable cellphones — it is not nearly the cross-platform panacea it was originally conceived as.
Fagan’s concerns about the fragmentation of Android is being echoed by other developers… Read More