[Galaxy S I9000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] andrewluecke:
Umm, I see a lot of ill-thought of arguments here..

Probably because otherwise people will have a huge list of apps, of which only a handful can be installed. On Songbird media player, they do this for the extension's, and let you see ones for previous versions, and everyone complains. I wouldn't want to see a long list of random russian apps I can't understand..

On iOS, if you don't jailbreak, you can only install Apple-approved apps. But on Android, we can install whatever we want. We only need to root if we want to mess with the system files (which are protected to stop applications accidentally breaking your phone). On Android, generally only geeks have a "need" to root their phones, but on iOS, you need to root anytime you want to install an Application which competes against Apple. iOS has much greater restrictions than Android, and iOS market has ridiculous/constantly changing restrictions.

Umm, it mostly is. The awesome thing about Android is that you can override most of the GUI if you wish. In comparison, the iPhone is quite the opposite.

There is no reason why you can't add Android support to normal Linux distro's, but that isn't Google's job. Google does provide code, distro's just need to integrate it. But I doubt Google want to waste resources adding support to every distro out there who wants Android integrated. If they provide their own tight system which is trimmed down, they can support it better.

They wouldn't be if they knew:

1) Security would be much worse (Android has many security mechanisms to help reduce the effort of viruses and such)

2) CPU usage would be higher

3) Even between distro's you have issues sharing binaries

4) Linux packaging systems contains a huge amount of sux

5) Many linux distro's aren't designed for small screens.

5) And finally, applications would be CPU dependent (but dependent on a LOT more RAM, and juice). Since this phone is ARM, you wont find much..

Sorry, but Linux is the only OS still with serious backwards compatibility and forward compatibility issues. I doubt mobile phone companies want to spend time debugging people's custom Linux distro which they messed up..

Apple already banned apps coded in another language from the app store, and might ban non-apple SDK's on a whim. This WiSDK is great until you realise that it will be outdated compared to the official SDK (and that Apple can shut it down at any time). If you were a major company, you'd be crazy to rely on a SDK such as that. On Android, you have FREE access FROM GOOGLE to develop for Windows, OSX or Linux on any x86 hardware you want (although, it might be fine on other architectures). If you think Google's market sucks, you can put it on another one (you don't need to pay Google a dollar ever), and if you don't like Google's ad services in your free app, choose another ad provider.

Even after all that, if Apple feels your app competes against them, or it doesn't comply with their non-public constantly changing terms, you might have wasted $10000 developing an app which can't be used except by jailbreakers. There is no argument between development on iOS and Android, because Android is much less riskier.

Yep, illegally (great way to run a company), at the risk of your environment breaking EVERY update. And yes, you often need to update OSX to install the latest Xcode. I'm sure the latest thing a small development company wants to do is waste resources testing every OSX patch to ensure it works with Boot-132, and fixing it. Apple's are great, until you paid a huge excess for a Mac Pro, and are the only person on the planet still using an X1900 (whilst the rest are using 8800's).

Not as much though. At least you aren't required to own premium-priced equipment, and Android is much more widespread (because any mobile phone vendor can use it). At the end of the day, it's a null argument, because on iOS, if Apple doesn't approve your app, you have mostly waited your time. Developers are fed up with Apple, and MANY complain that they are forced to play ping pong with Apple for a month or longer at time before their app is approved.

Not really.. The SDK is powerful enough to let you test various hardware configurations if you want to, and even on iOS, if you haven't developed your application properly, you might have issues in the future anyway.

The reason why games and such have stunk on Android, is that Android used slow byte-code. JIT was recently introduced and should mostly fix that problem (after all, who wants to code games for an OS which is slow). The other real problem was users (growing rapidly), and poor multi-touch (in part, thanks patent system, and Apple for buying the technology from university students).

I wouldn't worry about the various hardware configurations, because the hardware is mostly abstracted away from the SDK anyway, and the changes needed to support many hardware is obvious and well documented in the SDK (ie, don't assume the user has a touchscreen, allow access by Joystick too, etc).

The apps that do break because of diversity in the software configurations between various vendors are generally system tools (such as launchers), and aren't possible to create on the iPhone's anyway..

So, in summary, I disagree with almost all your points....