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0 pointswindexh8er2y ago0 comments

This is an old trope that's not nearly as relevant as you seem to imply. It is also the same problem Apple would have with laptop and desktops, but is really not an issue.

I, personally, believe that the platform has very little to do with that disparity of revenue at this point - but it is directly related to the demographic purchasing the phone. Android phones are often much easier to acquire with fewer financial resources. That is not the market Apple has targeted or has wanted to cater to in their quest to position themselves as a more premium brand. In some cases they may be and in others it is a marketing facade that people have bought into.

But, the reality is to deliver a good experience on Android isn't any harder than that same experience on Apple. Is it as financially rewarding? Probably not, again due to the difference in overall demographic of users. But I think it has very little to do with technical limitations or variances as described.

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dagmx2y ago

In what way is it an irrelevant trope?

Just look at how apps are handled by the variety of folding Android phones today or devices with unusual aspect ratios. You get clipping and stretching in a lot of cases, even as recently as the latest Pixel Fold

iOS has much better UI libraries than Android. They also have a better constraint and relative positioning system that allows for UI to adapt to changes in screen ratios.

And none of that even addresses the disparity of Android versions in use. Yes, Google Play and Jetpack help paper over some of that, but good luck if you need to use a non-Google Play device or need to deal with some of the APIs that just don’t get shimmed. Or if you’re using graphics APIs and need to deal with the vendor and OS specific deviances in Vulkan implementation.

I very much disagree with your dismissal of it as a dated trope. As a game and app dev, targeting Android is incredibly annoying even today and results in targeting the most popular models in a demographic and hoping things scale outwards.

windexh8erOP2y ago

I didn't say "irrelevant" - and I do agree with parts of your statement. As I said, it's not nearly as relevant to the context of the argument. The argument being that it's hard to deliver ROI (look at the grandparent comment) on Android because of technical limitations.

And, as I said, I "personally" believe this to be true. Android was much harder to develop for previously. It's a lot better. And I do see some of the same problems in the IOS ecosystem when I try to run apps clearly written for iPhone form factors on iPad.

But, my argument was stating that ROI was not really tied to the technical limitations (again I personally believe this to be true, being a mostly Android user) as stated and more on the demographic of user.

TL;DR I, personally, don't believe that technical limitations create ROI disparity between IOS and Android store revenue.

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