What App Developers Want: Letters To Steve Jobs And Larry Page

Not that I like TL;DRs, but I can give you a quote which will save you time:<p>"On the whole I like Android even more than iOS. [Mention of Java, and less polished dev tool chain]. I can live with those quirks, though, and otherwise it’s mostly a developer’s dream: powerful, flexible and open(ish)."<p>So, as you might expect, the Apple "requests" are "Please be more like Android". Having done a lot of iOS dev, Garbage Collection isn't even in my top 10 wants (his claim that it adding it would halve iOS dev times is bunkum). An Android like multitasking model is also not in my top 10 (widgets + the ability to do preemptive content downloads would cover ever use case I've ever wanted, and basically every other need I've seen). His repeated use of "fanboy" also gives the article -20 karma: Apple, and Apple developers never said multitasking is evil, just that unrestricted desktop (i.e power unlimited device) multitasking was a poor fit - a position that's still true.<p>For iOS, I do want: Better notification system. The ability to silently respond to pushes (i.e. Update my databases without showing any UI). Better system wide connectivity notifications. Better inter-app connectivity (something like Androids intents, I guess). Cocoa data bindings. A sync service API (desktop to iOS or web service to iOS).<p>I do <i>not</i> want iOS to become OS X, or a desktop OS. That is not helpful to me, or my users. A phone is not a tiny laptop, and frankly, nor is a tablet.

"Please give us real multitasking, like Android"<p>Please DO NOT.<p>OLPC wanted to halt the CPU from time to time to reduce consume and discovered that it was feasible... if only the software let them. A lot of linux apps were designed using polling that make that impossible to do, so they had to modify it and remove the polling in all apps, a huge task that took an enormous effort.<p>Steve Jobs, who is not stupid learned from them and decided to not let coders be lazy with iOS so the same battery rocks way more than Android.<p>The difference between "What App develovers want", and "what iOS users want". Long battery life.

Interestingly, John Siracusa's latest episode of Hypercritical, "A Dark Age of Objective-C" touches on much of the issue of Apple's reliance on Objective C both for OS X and iOS, and argues that in the long term, it's extremely problematic. Highly recommended:<p><a href="http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/14" rel="nofollow">http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/14</a>

"Please make it possible to develop iOS apps on something other than a Mac."<p>A few months ago I wrote a quick HTML5 app and when it came time to port it over to a proper iOS app, I found out Xcode only worked on Macs. And I'm a PC guy.<p>What did I end up doing? I made it into an Android app.<p>I'm sure I'm not the only casual app developer that didn't end up submitting to the App Store just because it was too much of a hassle. There's certainly no shortage of apps in the Store, but I think mine could have been better than at least 40% of them.

It's as if the author took some of the marketing points that the two platforms used against each other and then used that as an argument for what programmers want?<p>Garbage collection is so simple. Once you're over the fear of feeling overwhelmed by having to "manage" memory it's really a non-issue.<p>Real multitasking? No thanks. I can't come up with a "real world" problem that the current implementation doesn't solve.<p>I'm actually from the "developing world," and I must say his argument is a bit of an insult to me. Sure, I we don't typically make as much money as an American or a European, but we buy the things we like... And if that happens to be Apple hardware then that's what we buy.<p>I can't argue with his Android points since I've just started coding on Android.

I don't feel like somebody from TechCrunch is a good representative of all developers.

I have been doing Objective-C development since 1991 and started with Java around late 95/early 96. I am still using both language almost on daily basis and honestly the GC is not something I really miss on iOS. In fact I like the fact on how I can fine control the memory deallocation as I want rather than decided by the OS. Of course with close to 20 years of Obj-C dev it seems natural.<p>I would love rather an improved AppStore and even better access to some underlying part of iOS. I can't speak much for Android since I just started with it, but any developer learning iOS SDK should rather spend the appropriate amount of time to understand the simple concept of retain/release and how to use each framework to write stable application rather than apps that crash way to often.<p>What is really a bummer is that the iOS SDK provide some good tools to discover memory leaks when debugging the app (with Instruments) and even the great analysis tools now fully integrated with XCode 4. Unfortunately a good chunk of developers releasing apps in the AppStore do not necessary invest the time to learn the tools they are using.

There are currently ~300,000 iOS apps and 99% of them are junk. As much as I would welcome simplified iOS development, its primary effect would be to attract simplified developers and that is the opposite of what Apple needs right now.<p>I don't <i>like</i> that arbitrary hoop-jumping is effectively used to weed out low-quality code, but I can appreciate why developer convenience is not a priority for Apple.

Apple has enormous success that is largely due to it's control freak tendencies. They make some really great innovations, and then lock everyone in to their proprietary ecosystem using the appeal of these innovations.<p>Locking users down doesn't work forever though. iTunes did for a while, with DRM on every song. Finally users were able to pay to get rid of it, as other sources (Amazon MP3) were offering competition. The only way I can see Apple continuing to be so successful with iOS is through continued innovation, not by caving in to developers demands for features---what developer has refused to reach Apples enormous market because they weren't happy with development tools? Something like no garbage collection seems like a small issue when considering the upsides of developing for iOS. (I really hope better web technologies will change this.)<p>It reminds of a quote sitting in my high school journalism room: ``People like cocaine and prostitutes, but we don't give them that either.''

Fragmentation is my primary concern with Android development, and is something that I faced head on with much frustration with my own apps. But what exactly can Android do about this? It seems that Android's staggering success is at least partially based on its Windows-like approach to essentially go "broad spectrum" and get on as many devices as possible. How do you negate fragmentation without clearing out a large swath of your device base?

I'm an iOS developer and there is one reason why I don't develop for Android: Java.<p>If Google would officially support Go as a development language for the system it would be awesome. I'd support Android without hesitation then.<p>But Java? No thanks ...