Android vs IPhone Development

Recently I've jumped head-first back into the mobile scene and need to spin up on Android and iPhone development. I'll admit a Java bias going in, but I'll try to remain objective.

Here are some initial thoughts:

- Google makes it very easy...

App-engine relieves many of the burdens of developing scaled web apps. I was up and running in less than an hour with a sample app. And in under a week I wrote Mobido, of which the sizeable portion of that week was learning how to fit my data models into Big Table. Otherwise is was very straight forward Java web app development in my familiar Eclipse IDE.

Android is also very quick to spin up on. I had my first app running in less than an hour, and at the end of a long evening I had deployed the first mobile version of Mobido to my actual phone for testing. Super easy. At first glance, the Android Market also seems easy to jump into (10 minutes and I was signed up and prompted to upload my app). Compare this to Apple which took me several days just to get approved into the Apple Developer Connection due to a glitch in their sign-up process with authentication.

- Apple has market share

This is hard to argue against. No matter how good Google's dev environment is, when a business makes a business decision they will usually shoot for the sooner/safer bet, than a hope Android will catch up. Apple has certainly earned their share by creating a truly innovative product and pounding the carriers (as only Steve Jobs can do) into a semi-reasonable customer offer. Of course the Apple UI is very nice and I've heard many great stories about neophytes and technology averse people being able to use the iPhone in short order.

- Apple locks out developers

I have a Thinkpad, so unless I can fire up OS X in an emulator or am willing to buy a Mac I'm out of luck. Google is wide open to development on all the major platforms.

- Apple is earning the distrust of developers

There has been lots of banter recently about the arbitrary nature of the App Store approval process. Perhaps (and I hope) these are simply growing pains and will be fixed soon, but in the mean time this is tarnishing a good reputation.



Now it's onto the fun stuff for me... finishing up an Android port of Mobido, and trying to find the right mix to create an iPhone version.