[Xoom General] PopinFRESH:
Stop teh FlipFlop :)

A lot of you keep flip flopping on what you are measuring here. The op specifically lists the quote above as an example of only counting tablet specific apps. measuring by that standard, there are way more iPad only apps than Honeycomb tablet apps. For those of you who say just because it doesn't say it's not made for a tablet doesn't mean it doesn't work, I agree. By that measurement, all iOS apps work on the iPad, and they work exactly as expected because they are simply pixel doubled (Although as the op pointed out they don't completely fill the screen 100% when they are scaled).

Another point that has been raised is a qualitative measure of the apps in either store. Apple's App Store is a pretty clear winner here as well. This stems from two issues. First, the curated store versus free-for-all store. Second, device fragmentation. The later is more of a problem for the development side and thus requires dev's spend less time on "fit & finish" and more time tweaking their apps for the thousands of hardware variations. This is an issue that most dev's view as a problem for the android market (See link below). This problem also keeps some prominent dev's away from android all together (such as EPIC games). Looking at several apps that are available on both platforms, iOS apps not only look better, but in many cases some functionality has been gimped on the android app. There was a writeup about this recently to which I can't find but I was able to locate one of the screen capture comparisons of FaceBook from that article.

(due to forum rules I can't make these active links yet :( )

FaceBook Screen Shot:

wpuploads.appadvice.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/facebook.png

Dev Survey:

\/\/w\/\/.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2011/04/poll-android-fragmentation-issues.php

Don't get me wrong, I like several features about android, but when it comes to the Android Market versus App Store, iOS takes the cake.. or in this case the dough $$$. I have more android devices than I do iOS devices, However I have only purchased one app from the android market. I have an iPhone 4, iPhone 3Gs, iPad 2 (WiFi), Motorola Atrix (still sad about locked bootloader), HTC Inspire, Sony Xperia X10, HTC Aria (CM6), Samsung Captivate, and a Nexus.

Summary, In small portable devices like Smartphones and Tablets, Hardware and software working in concert is of greater importance than the PC of yester-year. That being said, for Android's license model to work like Microsoft's windows license model has for PC's, Google needs to have established hardware specification / form factor windows that can be reliably tested against. Secondly, they need to separate the core OS and the UI framework so they can allow vendors to customize their UI inline with the framework, which would allow Google to release an update to the core OS without the need to wait for the vendors to customize the core OS with their UI. Users could then update to the most current OS, and vendors can customize and tweak their UI to add new features of the new OS and release an updated UI when it's ready. Right now, the more consistent approach to iOS & Apple hardware is yielding better apps that are more profitable for dev's.

P.S. sorry about the run-on sentences