I/O Thoughts

http://rustyshelf.org/2014/07/01/io-thoughts/

by ismavis • 12 years ago

323 133 12 years ago

cheald8• 12 years ago

ever since we’ve had success on the Android platform [Our Apple developer rep has] made it very clear that his services are no longer available to us.

Wow. That is shocking to me - is that typical of Apple? I know they're very much about having people their ecosystem, but I didn't realize that there was this kind of animosity towards people who stepped out of bounds.

jbigelow76• 12 years ago

Maybe the Apple rank and file took Jobs's "thermonuclear war" vow to heart[1]

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-20/jobs-regretted-not-...

fpgeek4• 12 years ago

That makes me wonder if they'd have gotten the same reaction for a successful Windows Phone app (though, for practical reasons, I don't expect many developers to end up testing that).

jjoonathan• 12 years ago

Or they get performance pay based on converting/retaining their assigned customers.

fpgeek4• 12 years ago

Well, taking 2+ years (and at least one lawsuit) to fix the "iMessage switcher" bug seems to fit the same pattern.

aviraldg• 12 years ago

Why is the truth being downvoted?

chimeracoder• 12 years ago

Anecdotally, I've heard horror stories from friends who develop apps for multiple platforms of being "punished" by Apple for releasing features to their Android application first, or similar things.

Those friends don't talk about it publicly for fear of further retaliation, but given their experiences, what OP wrote doesn't surprise me in the least.

fpgeek4• 12 years ago

Those friends don't talk about it publicly for fear of further retaliation, but given their experiences, what OP wrote doesn't surprise me in the least.

But what is surprising, especially given the prevalence of these anecdotes, is that OP wrote about it. I have the feeling he made the calculation that there isn't much left that Apple can do to them (other than kick them out of their app store, which would probably backfire spectacularly, of course).

robryan• 12 years ago

Seems like a weird attitude. Almost everyone with the resources to do so is going to want their app distributed as widely as possible across multiple platforms. Personally if I was at Apple I would be accepting that and trying my best to make iOS the platform you have the best dev experience on so that you are encouraged to put as much time as possible into the iOS app and update it more or at least as regularly as elsewhere.

zak_mc_kracken6• 12 years ago

Very logical and absolutely not the way Apple operates.

Steve Jobs' ghost is going to be haunting these walls for a very long time (well, at least until the new campus comes).

zak_mc_kracken6• 12 years ago

Wow. That is shocking to me - is that typical of Apple?

Yes it is. We have a pretty successful app in the iTunes store and as a consequence, we have privileged access to the entire team, including engineers and executives who advise us how to word the description of our app and telling us all kinds of tricks to increase downloads.

A few months ago, we released an Android app and since then, we have fallen into a complete Apple black hole. The Apple people we used to exchange daily emails with are not even responding to us any more.

Apple is very, very serious about exclusivity.

And probably feeling very, very threatened too.

cheald8• 12 years ago

That's...well, bizarre seems too kind. As an outsider who hasn't ever dealt with Apple in that kind of capacity, it seems downright childish.

I'm not sure that I was in danger of developing iOS apps any time soon, but these kinds of tales make me want to run screaming.

chmars• 12 years ago

What's the name of your app?

izacus• 12 years ago

Yes, we were told directly by Apple that we will not be featured on AppStore or get any dev contacts if we release Android app together with the iOS version.

morsch• 12 years ago

That certainly explains why there are so many iOS exclusives. Here I was blaming the Android platform or foolish developers, when in fact Apple's aggressive business practices were -- at least partially -- to blame.

Also serves as a reminder what we, both as devs and users, gave up when we put ourselves at the mercy of approximately 2.5 app store operators. There's no need to remind me what we gained, I'm aware. The question is rather if we can get a system that combines the best of both worlds.

kreeger• 12 years ago

When I worked for Universal Uclick, we released the GoComics app all at the same time for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. I worked on the iOS release until its launch, and we had the ear of its developer support team up until and well after its release. We even were able to get the app 'featured' in the App Store shortly after its release.

We didn't experience a cold shoulder at all from Apple after putting out the app for other platforms. But then again, that was just us.

suprgeek• 12 years ago

"...is that it highlighted just how insular and superior a lot of Apple developers act and feel. If you don’t believe me, just join a group of them at WWDC and whip out your Android phone. Within moments, you’ll wish you had whipped out something less offensive, like your genitalia instead."

Can relate to this a little bit...A coworker who is completely in the Apple camp argued fiercely how consistent the iOS keyboard was when I mentioned to him that the Android one changes case to match the Caps lock setting.

jonah• 12 years ago

Android one changes case to match the Caps lock setting.

My primary mobile device runs Android and it's always a shock to me that the iOS keyboard doesn't do this. Are they taking their skeuomorphism too literally?

MBCook3• 12 years ago

As a die-hard iOS user... that was a stupid argument to be in. There is a reason Apple does what it does (supposedly to match a real keyboard) but it's not strong and doesn't matter.

And the iOS 7 shift key symbol stupidity should automatically lose him the argument.

bollockitis2• 12 years ago

There is a reason Apple does what it does (supposedly to match a real keyboard) but it's not strong and doesn't matter.

Wow. Really? That a silly reason for an otherwise indefensible UI decision. I really wish the iOS keyboard changed case. Ever since iOS 7, I can't tell whether shift is on or off. Maybe I'm just an idiot, but sometimes I fumble with it a half dozen times before getting it right. It's worse than trying to plug in a USB cable.

zak_mc_kracken6• 12 years ago

There is a reason Apple does what it does (supposedly to match a real keyboard)

This argument doesn't stand since the shift key itself changes when you press it (it switches from an empty arrow to a filled arrow), something a real keyboard obviously doesn't do.

There's just no practical nor logical reason for the iOS keyboard to act like that.

wldcordeiro• 12 years ago

Wouldn't that reason lose validity now that they've moved away from skeuomorphism? I've found that to be one of my biggest annoyances with iOS that the keys don't reflect the characters that will be typed.

interpol_p• 12 years ago

I've met both types of people, those who argue fiercely for either Google/Android or for Apple. Learning to ignore them is the best thing you can do. I don't think they are any more prominent in one camp or another.

girvo2• 12 years ago

I find people who seem to pin their own identity and ego onto a brand perplexing. I mean, I get irrationally excited about new technology, but I'm not going to be any brands "fanboy".

rdtsc• 12 years ago

Within moments, you’ll wish you had whipped out something less offensive, like your genitalia instead."

I am intrigued, what happened? Did they verbally insult him?

sferoze• 12 years ago

so funny

jgh• 12 years ago

meh...I've been in the "Apple Camp" since they released the SDK in 2008 and I've yet to work with anyone who would find it offensive that someone has different tastes than them when it comes to their device choices. it really doesnt matter that much.

That said I'll probably be looking to do more non-iOS work as well in the near future, I need to expand my horizons again.

timothya2• 12 years ago

One of the things that I've always seen as an interesting difference between how Google and Apple run their developer relations teams is the title that they give their employees. Apple has Technology Evangelists, suggesting that they promote the use of certain technologies (typically Apple's own technology or Apple-supported web technology). Google, on the other hand, has Developer Advocates - these are people who actually represent non-Googler developers internally at Google.

While they may just be titles, my experience has been consistent with their titles. Apple representatives you see once a year at WWDC, while Google representatives you see at Google I/O and also at a number of Google-hosted events year-round, including the regular videos they put out (and the "office-hours" type Hangouts they have so that you can actually talk to them and get your problems resolved) - just look at all of the events they have scheduled on the Google Developer Events page[0] or all of the videos they have on their YouTube channel[1]. I've also seen a lot of them give talks at tech conferences, while Apple employees are rarely seen at conferences. And you can see that Google's Developer Advocates really do talk directly to the actual teams directly and file bugs against them when necessary on behalf of developers everywhere. It's a system that has worked pretty well in my experience.

I will also agree that Google's Developer Advocates don't care too much about what platform you're using and just want to help you. I've been to a number of Google-run technical workshops and codelabs, and the people there are willing to help you with whatever problems you run into, no matter what it is.

[0] https://developers.google.com/events/

[1] https://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleDevelopers

murtza• 12 years ago

The difference between a developer advocate and a developer evangelist is inbound vs outbound.

Developer advocates are focused on helping address developers' problems. Developer evangelists are focused on increasing product use and adoption.

That said, the responsibility of these positions mostly overlap. In my personal experience as a developer evangelist at Marketo, my day-to-day work has encompassed the function of both titles. My goal is to create a great developer experience [0] in order to drive platform adoption [1].

Anecdotally, I have noticed a shift towards the developer advocate title. At Facebook, Dropbox, and Twitter, the role is called this.

[0] http://murtza.org/creating-a-great-developer-experience/

[1] http://murtza.org/driving-the-api-adoption-funnel/

timothya2• 12 years ago

The difference between a developer advocate and a developer evangelist is inbound vs outbound.

That's a great way of looking at it. There is definitely some overlap, but I think it's nice to have the mindset that they are on the external developers' side rather than just the company's side. And it works well I think - by helping out those developers, they can work towards better products and platforms, and increase adoption at the same time. Everyone wins.

girvo2• 12 years ago

Small web world. I just spent the last two weeks integrating Marketo into a website at work.

_navaneethan• 12 years ago

Which category Microsoft will sit on? Evangelist or Advocates?

jusben13692• 12 years ago

I wonder if that's because Google needs this role and Apple doesn't. Apple has such a super buttoned down approach and take it or leave it mentality that a developer advocate role may be redundant. Google has always had a loser feel with disparate divisions which in turn requires helping outside developers navigate the internals. Just a guess.

alphakappa• 12 years ago

Just in case the parent is being down-voted for saying 'loser feel'... I think he meant 'looser feel'.

tiglionabbit• 12 years ago

They have developer hangouts? Where?

estel• 12 years ago

Sadly, they stopped doing them a year or so ago. Here's the most recent that I can find: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na9m9MTn9JY

quesera2• 12 years ago

In fairness, the "evangelist" title at Apple goes way back to the time when technology ("home computers?!") really did need evangelizing to the press and the general public.

Then, as now, Apple believed in their mission with a fervor that suggested the nomenclature. See 1980s Guy Kawasaki, etc.

flomo2• 12 years ago

Interesting historical trivia. But it's worth noting that Apple's 1990s developer strategy was almost a total failure, whereas Microsoft's "talk to actual developers" approach was much more successful.

Note I'm not making some sort of Mac/Windows analogy because the whole communication space has changed radically. Just making the point that the title "evangelist" implies more of a marketing role.

zmmmmm• 12 years ago

Android is now clearly their platform of choice, it runs on TVs, cars, phones, tablets, watches and in your home. The same OS, different screens was their message.

This was one of the big surprising take aways for me. The minute Pichai took over I had the feeling that Android's future was limited - they would keep investing in it for sure but it would be on a long term road map for convergence and eventual transition to ChromeOS. I expected to first see Chrome apps running as first class citizens on Android, then a new SDK for Android that was all about ChromeOS and then finally a deprecating of the Java SDK. It always felt to me like internally Google preferred ChromeOS and the web as a platform and Android was a sort of accidental success that they were just running with until they could somehow meld it into their pure vision of computing, as represented by ChromeOS.

So now I'm having to significantly revisit all that thinking, as if anything Google seems to be pushing Android everywhere and little was said about ChromeOS.

fidotron• 12 years ago

I got the distinct impression Sundar has changed his tune now he's not threatened by Android, but instead runs it.

Anyone that had thrown their lot in with Chrome Apps or similar probably felt this year how Android devs did last year.

SquareWheel• 12 years ago

Though if you're invested in Chrome apps, at the end of the day it's still web technologies. It'll run anywhere, even if Google is backing off. In some ways it's a safer bet for developers.

general_failure• 12 years ago

This is not some single person dictatorship where Sundar can just call all the shots. They are so many people vested in Android at Google. I don't think Sundar has a choice.

I really dislike how everyone thinks the too management can sweepingly do anything they want. It does not work like that.

DCKing• 12 years ago

There is a bit of convergence going on.

Chrome is now a first-class citizen of Android; its tabs will now appear seperately in the multitasking menu. Android apps are coming to Chrome OS in windows.

If this is to be interpreted as a first step, I imagine that Chrome OS will eventually become yet another variation of Android. A variation focused on windows, and instead of bundled installed apps a greater focus on Chrome. But still with it all being Android underneath.

dewitt• 12 years ago

Not directly related to his post, but if you haven't tried Pocket Casts yet, I highly recommend it. Best podcast app I've ever used, hands down.

rogerbinns• 12 years ago

Do however be wary if you use it in a car. I've found it quite flaky. That includes randomly stopping for no apparent reason (on content that was fully downloaded), random crashes, forgetting things (like it was playing a list of episodes not just one), starting to play 2 hours after I pressed play, forgetting position and the list goes on.

They were responsive the first time I contacted them (before buying) but ignored my emails after I had bought and found issues like the above.

If you aren't in a car then you can resolve most of those issues by pressing the right buttons in the app. However while driving you can't, hence it mattering a lot more.

bronson• 12 years ago

Agree 100%. Also, it has serious streaming problems. Don't bother starting a podcast unless it's 100% downloaded.

supercoder• 12 years ago

Yeah doesn't work in the car for me either, cuts out a couple minutes in usually.

reconbot• 12 years ago

If we're sharing podcast apps, DoggCatcher the podcast player is probably the best one on android.

bane• 12 years ago

I'll add Podcast Addict to the list, constantly updated and Chromecast support is awesome.

webwielder• 12 years ago

At the end of the day, Apple has always delivered far superior tools, frameworks, and ecosystem (development-wise). That to me says a lot more than how friendly the staff is.

deminature4• 12 years ago

Anecdotally, this is also my experience with using some of the lesser known frameworks in the Android ecosystem - nothing is documented properly or the documentation is years out of date and/or uses long deprecated methods, significant bugs remain open for years without attention, requiring time-consuming workarounds, and everyone just puts up with it, because that's the way things have always been.

An example of problematic documentation is Volley, which is a brilliant and totally needed framework and documentation that exists for it is a 45 minute presentation and a handful of StackOverflow posts.

archivator• 12 years ago

While I'm not arguing against your overall point, your example is not a good one. Volley was unnecessary. It only got attention because Google did it but the community was already on top of the issue. From shipping their own, newer Apache Client libs, through koush's ion and picasso, to Square's okhttp, networking on Android is full of good libraries to use. Volley didn't anything dramatic to this and, judging by the amount of attention it has received, it was someone's side project.

bredren• 12 years ago

This. We generally don't send employees to either WWDC or I/O. As a result, the tone, attitude of attendees or company reps don't matter to us much at all.

Our users and testers care about a great software experiences. So what matters most to us are stable, well designed and supported software platforms and ecosystems that let us deliver great experiences.

kumarm• 12 years ago

>Apple has always delivered far superior tools, frameworks, and ecosystem

Its easier to make good tools when they need to work on 5% market share (Mac only)?

Google Tools are free. Apple tools start with you buying their $2000 machine.

seanmcdirmid2• 12 years ago

In what country does a macbook air cost $2K?

Also, many people who use Google tools also have macbooks (e.g. all the Googlers I know), they have to use the tools with something.

austinz3• 12 years ago

You can get a Mac Mini that more than suffices for around $600-$800. But honestly, if paying $2000 was the only way to get a set of Android SDKs and development tools of the same caliber as Apple's developer offerings, I would immediately do so. I like the idea of the platform and I believe in anything that makes it easier for developers to build better applications.

altyus• 12 years ago

Yet most Android devs I know use Macs....

eddieroger• 12 years ago

It's not like the effort to make a good tool scales proportionally to your user base or anything. Besides, the developer tools for Mac are the same used for iOS, which is a lot more than 5% of it's market. Microsoft could easily put out tools and frameworks on par (and do in some cases, VS is amazing) and would only do better if they'd drop support for OSes that have been obsolete for decades. There's no reason to have 16bit calls available any more.

eropple4• 12 years ago

Apple tools start with you buying their $2000 machine.

I bought a 27" iMac with a 2.7GHz Sandy Bridge i5 for $250 on Sunday. Try again.

wilg• 12 years ago

This is such a weird way to compare the costs. You still need a computer to use the Google tools. Also you can get a MacBook Air for less than half that price.

blinkingled2• 12 years ago

Ugh, no. Ask anyone who has used both Xcode and Visual Studio. I used it once for porting a C/C++ project to OS X - it crashed a ton, the debugger integration was sub-par, the new window for everything thing was annoying. It did not really feel like a superior experience. If there's anyone delivering superior tools - it's Microsoft hands down.

deminature4• 12 years ago

the new window for everything thing was annoying

This hasn't been the case since XCode 4, which was released in 2010 and introduced a single-window for everything.

megablast2• 12 years ago

Eh, I have always preferred Xcode over VS. Maybe I just hated .Net.

alttab• 12 years ago

Late one night I began watching the room sessions, and after I kinda wrote off the Keynote I began to see the same level of organization the writer spoke about. Unification across all applications, platforms, screen sizes, and use cases was a huge priority and that is a rather radical shift from what I've seen. They have focus.

skizm• 12 years ago

You have to remember, Apple is selling all Apple stuff. Google is selling the web.

ttflee• 12 years ago

Google is actually selling the Ads, IMHO.

megablast2• 12 years ago

Great piece, very interesting.

Overall they just seem more balanced, you can tell that what Apple is doing doesn’t keep them up at night.

Eh, I have found the opposite, whereas Android developers will be very hardcore, almost akin to .Net developers who only use bing. They will only use Android, and Google, and Open Source, and never pay for anything ever. Even apps. And beware if you have an iPhone.

Not all, and maybe I am sheltered from the Apple critics because I leave my Android phone and table at home. And it really depends who you meet.

I certainly see Apple as a very closed company compared to Google, but it looks like that is changing with the WWDC 3,000 API's announcement, really opening up the OS to developers. iOS devs can start to do cool things that Android devs have been doing for a while.

As for the Google anouncements, is TV any different than the last few years? And they still don't seem to have wearables right yet.

hyperion2010• 12 years ago

I read the sentence you quote as referring directly to the engineers who work at google, not android developers.

bjchrist• 12 years ago

Are google glass completely dead now?

amaks• 12 years ago

"Having met a lot of Apple employees, I can’t say the same is true on the other side. They seem overly obsessed with Google, and are insanely sensitive should you bring the topic up, or deity of choice forbid, you actually develop on a Google platform."

It used to be exactly like that in Microsoft around 2010. Microsofties were extremely sensitive about non-WP devices other employees used. Hopefully things have changed there since then.

fortuitous• 12 years ago

I was trying to enjoy the company of a friend and his friend turned out to be an Apple executive and had a lot of passive things to say about the fact that I had an android phone. the gist was it was too big, not many apps, and other nitpicking stuff. I couldn't help but think... well gee just try another smaller android phone, but I wanted to just eat dinner and ignored his snide comments. They're definitely obsessed from the top down.

IMO, they need to stop whining and give users what they want, a cheaper phone. That could have stopped android years ago, instead they just sued and became indignant. As if that helps. You want to talk about a bubble. I fear the day when apple's revenue drops. I sort of want them to stop bitching and do something, because that day won't be pretty.

_pmf_• 12 years ago

Could we please not appropriate the generic term I/O for the gimmicky marketing travesty that is Google I/O? Some people expect an insightful article about system programming.

joeblau• 12 years ago

None of them care what phone you use, what laptop you choose or which platforms you develop for.

Benedict Evans has a very interesting take on why Google has this sentiment. Basically, it comes down to Apple being about hardware and considering the cloud dumb storage and Google being about cloud services and the hardware being dumb glass (not Google Glass, but hardware interfaces). It seems like Google as a company is in sync, all they want to do is get their cloud services on as many devices as possible because the real value of Google is in the cloud. I agree with Benedict's hypothesis and I can't wait to see how these two companies unfold over the next decade. They currently seem to have two different trajectories.

eitally• 12 years ago

I agree with everything you wrote -- thanks for taking the time to put it to paper! Two other things: I've been to five I/Os and this year's keynote was absolutely the worst in terms of quality of presentation. It honestly seems like they didn't plan to announce L until it was leaked a couple weeks ago. I'm glad they did and I think, given the lack of prep, it went pretty darn well. Secondly, before they started charging $900/ticket, I'm absolutely sure a lot of locals applied just for swag. I don't think that happens anymore, and you can tell from what they handed out this year that there will be no more free phones and tablets. If there is hardware swag, it will be new tech, not the stuff everyone already has.

Additionally, I was truly surprised at the heavy focus on Android at the expense of nearly everything else. I think with Sundar in charge we're seeing a sea change at Google in terms of platform focus, and this is -- while a little confusing sometimes -- a good thing. It also means I/O is turning into truly a hardcore developer conference with a unified theme (or several big themes), rather than a sort of dog & pony show ("Hey, look at this shiny, useless crap we've been working on!") like in the past (Nexus Q anyone? Android @Home? Google TV?). There was no mention this year of anything besides Android platform products & services, except the expected general purpose dev platform stuff (Compute Engine, App Engine, etc). I was surprised at the lack of mention of anything enterprisey, nothing about Google+ or identity management, anything about ChromeOS (just a small plug in the keynote about schools adopting Chromebooks), or any of their X projects. I at least thought they'd have some robots there to ogle.

If the keynote was subpar this year, the 'box talks were a highlight. The speakers were almost universally awesome, the open fora allowed high quality engagement, and if one topic didn't interest, it was easy to stroll to the next whiteboard/screen and see if that one did. Jake Archibald's talk on browser quirks was my favorite.

http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/speed/script-loading/

http://vimeo.com/77497239

Btw, I was fully expecting Android Wear to be a novelty I had no use for, but I very quickly came around and already find myself talking to my watch, James Bond style. I completely agree with this Ars post: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/android-wear-smartwat.... My wife & I have a "no phones at the dinner table" policy but even my kids have been telling me to "ask Google" for answers to questions. Having the knowledge graph so handy is awesome.

alecco• 12 years ago

How sad it is we are so easily seduced to take sides on a false dichotomy. How easily we forget our work becomes just a cog on someone else's platform. Relations centralized, us with the big player, very one-sided.

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