Posted on 04/08/2011 3:55:56 PM PDT by Swordmaker
When I use an iPhone and an Android phone at the same time, I often find that apps from the same company look a lot different on these two platforms - the ones on Android usually look much worse.
Here is a couple of examples.
This is what Meebo IM looks on Android, the contact list screen and the conversation screen:
and this is what Meebo IM looks on iPhone:
I think the difference is pretty obvious. The one on Android pretty much looks like a programming class project. The contact items are too narrow and thus hard to click. They also look bad. The conversation interface is like a geeky IRC client. Those smiley icons are disproportionately small. On the other hand, the interface on iPhone looks much much more polished.
Here is another example - the Facebook launch interface on iPhone vs. Android:
The same thing here. In the Android interface, icons are not properly aligned. The extra space makes the view look very awkward.
Last example is the user interface of Speedtest:
You are right. The FB app on my Droid X looks a lot better plus, you just go to the Facebook website on the browser and get full web experience with Flash- something you can’t get on the iPhone.
Wow! That is one goodlooking Jeep!
How does the name of the poster affect the post?
Question for Minn? Will PreperationH help me with my Android? Using it is a real pain in the ass.
LOL....I have noted the same. Add to that the Droid battery only lasted me less than a day and I can go three days on an iPhone battery, and I don’t lose 3G coverage like I did with Droid, and my WIFI smokes the performance I got with Droid, I am a happy camper now that I have switched.
Yeah, I have rock climbed in a Jeep [and various other 4 wheelers. It’s a good example too.
The Jeep has the goods but is also a beautiful, well designed vehicle. So why can’t they do that with Android? Why does Droid [and Microsoft] have to be ugly?
apple has an awesome site for development guidelines and their own objective c development environment......android suffers from typical open source mediocrity
Excuse me Minn, but this website is an ANDROID centric website, not an APPLE centric website, and the author is an ANDROID user, not an APPLE user. His point has been noted by many other reviewers as well. Just look at the examples he has provided, the differences are glaring and obvious!
Explains why I own a Jeep AND a Droid!
Mine looks totally different too. I see recently posted photos from friends on the bottom, and notification alerts. And all the icons are aligned.
Take a screen shot of your Facebook App and post it. I'd like to see how looks.
The handles within the OS make a big difference. Apple has the most comprehensive set of developer tools out there.
Another possibility is related to the tight integration of OS and hardware that makes the above possible. Android is called on to run on a very wide variety of screen sizes/resolutions, with a similar variety of processor/memory configurations. Developers keep two resolutions in mind (three if you add iPad -but that is actually it’s own situation if you want to fully utilize the full screen).
But these are just guesses...
Yep - that explains the frequent crashes several friends of mine have experienced with different versions of Android and hardware...
The only crash I have ever experienced on an iPhone was my old 3G after I jailbroke it and installed a bunch of OS tweaks and UI customizations...
This is my SMS (GO Pro SMS) which has tons of skins and fully customizable:
And here are a few of my home screens over the past few months:
Posted. I took the screenshot before the photos on the bottom loaded. But you can see its nothing like the one you posted. That screenshot is of a very old version of Facebook for Android.
I think you have the best answer so far. Apple's development environment is terrific. The tools are well designed. And the UI for applications is beautiful. It's attracting a lot of programmers.
“Some like out of the package pretty, some like gadgets and tinkering.”
It’s not just about appearance, it’s also about ergonomics (human factors engineering). That’s where Apple is head and shoulders above the rest.
Well, along with superior hardware and a vastly better selection of software. :-)
That is a very interesting graph. Objective-C is a simple yet very powerful language, providing features unavailable in Java. Apple also provides Xcode, one of the best integrated development tools around. And in addition Apple has created the Cocoa frameworks, a library of reusable code for creating applications quickly. Putting all of these features together makes Apple a terrific platform for developing applications, whether on the desktop or a mobile device.
Objective-C is a strict superset of C with the addition of classes and a syntax to support objects. Anyone who knows a little bit of C and has some experience with an object-oriented language like C++ or Java will be able to learn the language very quickly.
Thanks. I appreciate it. Yours does look better than the one posted in the article.
The Android Facebook app has been updated countless times in the past year. It’s kind of annoying, actually. :)
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