Android vs. iPhone OSZachary West

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Android iPhone OS

iPhone OS customer base: 85 million

Android customer base: 5-10 million

iPhone OS third-party apps: 190,000

Android third-party apps: 40,000

Application Count by Operating System

Freedom

Rejected legitimate iPhone apps: Hundreds

Unable to be installed outside App Store.

Torrent remote control, Google Voice, etc.

Removed Android apps: Tethering Apps

Able to be installed outside Market.

Can install any signed .apk from any source, except Motorola Backflip (AT&T).

Life Under Apple

Approval dependent upon unstable Apple policy

Restriction for morality, politics, adult-content, copyright violation, “duplicating” built-in applications

Removal of release control from developers

Human Interface Guideline enforcement

Uniformity of behavior

Prevents unexpected experience in all applications

Life Under Google

Significant levels of spam in Android Market

Little to no moderation of dangerous applications

Poor browsing and discovery experience in Market

Top-sellers make little profit compared to App Store

Geared towards open-source or free applications

Fully-integrated cloud experience

Android OS Divergence

iPhone 2G 3.1.3

iPhone 3G 3.1.3

iPhone 3GS 3.1.3

iPod Touch 1G 3.1.3

iPod Touch 2G 3.1.3

iPod Touch 3G 3.1.3

iPad 3.2 (iPad-only)

HTC G1 1.6

Samsung Galaxy 1.5

HTC Hero/G2 1.6 (modified)

Motorola Cliq 1.5

Samsung 5700 2.1

Motorola Droid 2.1 (3 months late)

HTC Google N1 2.1

Motorola Backflip 1.5 (modified)

Environment

Objective-C vs. Java

Retain/release vs. Garbage Collection

Cocoa Touch libraries vs. Java libraries

Integrated experience in Android OS

Helper applications, multitasking

Uniform experience in iPhone OS

No application task management, common paradigms

Notification System

Unified notification area in Android OS

Download status, unread mail, unread SMS, current playing song, etc.

Can delay until ready.

Modal and generic notifications in iPhone OS

Last notification on lock screen, while-running notification when unlocked; overrides previous.

Cannot delay until ready.

Punishing Developers

Apple: “Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).”

Welcoming Developers

Android NDK allows compiling native applications from other native-code languages, such as C and C++.

Allows for including native-code implementations in programs executing on the Dalvik VM.

Easy migration, re-use of large corpus of code.