[jonplackett]

It will have to make money somehow won’t it. It will either need to do advertising or get people to pay. Getting people to pay is easier if they have more money. Getting well-paying advertisers is also easier if your audience has more money.

The main thing I was commenting on though was iPhone being much easier to develop for. This is indisputable.

[dmingod666]

WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter these are the general social media platforms that Clubhouse comes in the category of. How many of them would rather be better off with only rich users and iPhone users? 'social media' app clones are available for a few hundred bucks with all features.. the billions valuations of these companies doesn't come from technology, it comes from user reach and numbers.. for social, the app with the bigger userbase takes all.. unless it's marketed specifical for a niche sector..

Iphone being easier to develop for is indisputable. Lolz!

Lots of "poor guys", a lot of them with money, in this world that look at apple and think overpriced hardware...

Can you develop for android on mac? Yes. Can you develop for android on Linux, yes, windows yes. Can you use a common language that is very easy to find devs for, yes.

To make an iphone app, You need a mac laptop and a paid developer account. Unlike java, swift is barely used for anything else than apple products, so devs for apple products are more expensive.

I mean, agree personal views and preferences may determine peoples choices and in many ways the apple store experience is much better than android, but "indisputable" is stretching the meaning of the word too far.

[jonplackett]

Instagram launched iPhone only and was iPhone only for 2 years

We’re not talking about long term - this is just about when you’re doing the bare minimum to get going, as all startups must.

You can launch a successful app iPhone only. You can’t launch a successful app android only (happy to be enlightened if you can prove me wrong with an example).

Startups only have limited development resources. So what do you do? Many decide to do iPhone only - in the beginning

You’re missing the point about iPhone being easier to develop for. Yeah anyone is free to develop android, but the android ecosystem is a mess. So many versions of android with varying features and so many phones to test on. Some stuck on decade older software. Whereas on iOS 90% of people are on the latest OS and 99% are only 1 or 2 steps behind with VERY similar features. There’s only 2 shapes of phone with another 2 sizes. My iPhone test setup is my iPhone 12 max and an old iPhone 6S. If it works on both of those I know I’m good. Developing for android is just much more time consuming.

I really don’t know why this is controversial. As you say, Clubhouse are a business and they do want to compete with FB Insta twitter etc. For them going iPhone first must therefore be a rational choice. I’m just trying to explain that choice rationally.

If you think this is wrong, what’s your reasoning for them then? Do you think they’re just snooty and letting that get in the way of sound logic?

[CydeWeys]

> To make an iphone app, You need a mac laptop and a paid developer account. Unlike java, swift is barely used for anything else than apple products, so devs for apple products are more expensive.

So many people overlook all of this. I don't have a Mac, I don't have an Apple developer account, and I don't know iOS/Swift. But guess what I do have: Linux and Windows computers, and the knowledge of Java.

A lot of people are in my boat, and for all of them, it's hard to say how making an iPhone app would be easier than making an Android app. I've made toy Android apps before. I didn't find it that hard. Certainly not as hard as learning a new language/IDE! (Android Studio is free and is built on top of IntelliJ, which I'm already familiar with.)