Angry Birds maker apologizes for Android fragmentation issues

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/11/19/angry_birds_maker_apologizes_for_android_fragmentation_issues.html

by evo_9 • 16 years ago

27 33 16 years ago

wccrawford• 16 years ago

The problem isn't 'fragmentation'. The problem is that some hardware can't handle the way they wrote the code. They are going to write a version that uses less processor power and release that as well.

If they had written the 'lighter' version first, it would run on all devices.

Nobody ever talks about the PC market being fragmented, and yet it's nothing but fragments. It's difficult to find 2 PCs that are identical unless they were purchased at the same time. That doesn't stop developers from making apps and games for PCs.

When they say that 'fragmentation' prevented them from reaching the whole market, what they're really saying is that their software uses too much CPU or another resource.

dpcan• 16 years ago

Android is a like a whole new ball game when it comes to fragmentation.

You can't rely on the same kind of touch screens, or a keyboard being present, or a trackball, or the speed being same, or an SD card existing, and the screen sizes all seem to be so different, cutting off part of your game's graphics or touch-areas.

On a PC, I can count on there being a 2 button mouse, keyboard, and a 1024x768 resolution in a pinch. There seems to be no fall-back on Android.

Then to top it off, it results in angry user feedback.

And what frustrates ME the most ... comments in the Android Market don't even tell us what phone model the poster is using. For goodness sake, the number of problems this would solve is HUGE.

OK ok, I'm beginning to rant. All I'm saying is Android is in a fragmentation class of its own :)

DanHulton• 16 years ago

Okay, it's good to see some backup on this - I got downmodded to hell the other day for even suggesting that Android was fragmented:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1917559

To be fair, my example sucked and I totally did misunderstand the Netflix issue. But I was right on the basic fragmentation problem, dagnabbit! =)

davidcann• 16 years ago

Nobody ever talks about the PC market being fragmented

Really? I think it's common to consider the PC market to be fragmented, especially when it comes to complex software like games.

mechanical_fish• 16 years ago

The XBox was born of the fact that it used to be an incredible pain in the neck to get PC games running on your custom hardware. That and the fact that custom hardware evolved so quickly that programmers could barely target a given class of GPU before it was obsolete.

mustpax• 16 years ago

The problem is that some hardware can't handle the way they wrote the code.

Um, that's the definition of fragmentation.

nym3• 16 years ago

Wow, talk about a biased article.

ido• 16 years ago

Read the URL.

nym3• 16 years ago

Well of course. I'm surprised this article got voted up on HN.

jrockway2• 16 years ago

Incidentally, the web has failed because there are 5 different major browsers, and personal computers have failed, because there is an infinite combination of available hardware.

How could anyone have tested on all those? How could anyone have ever developed a working web application? How could anyone have ever developed a working Windows application?

The non-sarcastic answer: most of the time, the differences are irrelevant. The rest of the time, you need to build an abstraction, and then the second case becomes the first! Forever!

(Android is open-source. If you need a function that only Android 2.2 has, backport it to 1.6! If you need an abstraction layer for dealing with 24-bit or 16-bit screens, write one and share it with the world! Android is open, and you have to exploit that fact to be successful. You can't go off into your own little Universe where there is one person with one phone running one app at a time. That may be the iOS strategy, but it's not what works for Android.)

fletchowns3• 16 years ago

The non-sarcastic answer: most of the time, the differences are irrelevant.

Clearly you have not had the wonderful experience of trying to get something working in IE the way it works in all the other browsers!

qeorge• 16 years ago

He's still correct. Even with IE, you just learn how to deal with it and you move on with your life.

mishmash4• 16 years ago

> If you need a function that only Android 2.2 has, backport it to 1.6!

And this solves the problems of users not having it how?

fletchowns3• 16 years ago

Well obviously you just need to backport it to 1.6, update all the custom user interfaces that each of the device makers have made, hack into several different OTA update systems, and force an update for millions of devices. Piece of cake right?

jrockway2• 16 years ago

You ship it with your app. When the users get your app, they get your abstraction layer.

nym3• 16 years ago

I could be incorrect, but I think he means implement the feature on top of 1.6, not the system itself.

The web example would be getElementsByClassName:

  function getElementsByClassName(node,classname) {
  	if (node.getElementsByClassName)
		return node.getElementsByClassName(classname);
	else {
		// your custom function
	}
  }

(example from quirksmode.org)

mahmud3• 16 years ago

It's customary in software engineering to "wrap" and augment system infrastructure with your own portability layer. You can see this everywhere; the Linux kernel, for example, bundles its own little library for emulating floating-point processing, for x86 systems that don't have x87 (very rare!).

The whole point of the C compiler -D argument is to allow you to enable features at compile time. GNU Autotools exploit this by inspecting the host environment and enumerating the available "features", allowing the build scripts to selectively compile your portability layers when a feature is missing.

With Android, you can use runtime reflection to instantiate the right objects, based on system parameters. I.e. your compiled APK can behave differently on two systems, say, by enabling extra functionality on older OS versions.

kylemathews• 16 years ago

I was going to complain about the poster editorializing again in the title then noticed who the article was from.

jwhitlark• 16 years ago

Heh. You know you've arrived when the competition just can't stop talking trash...

alphabeat• 16 years ago

Apple Insider? It must be pretty high up her!

smcdow• 16 years ago

Does no one in HN understand the basic concepts of configuration management?

Angry Birds maker apologizes for Android fragmentation issues

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