[trezor]

I work in software development. Almost everyone in my department has Android-phones bar a few self-confessed iAddicts (and one daring Windows phone 7 beta-tester). Despite its huge commercial success, the iPhone is among my peers considered a rather lulzy thing and a the undisputed weakest and least sophisticated of all the mobile platforms when measured on its own merits.

Not saying this is absolute truth either, but it certainly shows that your comment about what "most" people might think certainly doesn't ring true universally.

[MrScruff]

I also work in software development. Among my colleagues there are a mix of iPhone & Android users, but the divide seems primarily related to cost with the juniors much more likely to own Android.

I've played with a few Android devices and they're ok but to be honest, the whole thing seems to be playing out just like 90s Mac vs Windows, with Android users insisting iOS is a toy and iOS users berating Androids unpolished interface.

For me it always boils down to the same thing, if you're willing to accept the constraints imposed by the products designer, Apple stuff is the best out there.

> the undisputed weakest and least sophisticated of all the mobile platforms when measured on its own merits

This is fairly obviously not true. The iOS SDK is still widely considered the benchmark for people that work cross platform. It doesn't really matter that your developer friends think on the relatively technical merits if they're no more informed than the average Android user.

[trezor]

Just replying to say how you are confirming my point either you intend to or not: What people think about different things differ, and there is no "universal" consensus about most things.

Like there is no universal consensus on the iPhone being "better" than its Android rivals.

I guess we somehow agree even though we seemingly don't.

[white_devil]

the undisputed weakest and least sophisticated of all the mobile platforms when measured on its own merits.

Oh my fucking God, please. I wasn't sure before, but you just outed yourself as a huge Google -fanboy.

Yeah what's Apple's platform got going for it? -It just changed the whole industry and showed How It's Done. It's also regarded as technically very solid, and pleasant to develop for.

[steverb]

The iPhone did change the industry and it is technically very solid. However, it is NOT pleasant to develop for.

Having developed private apps for iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7 I personally find Windows 7 to be the best platform for development, with Android a distant second. iOS is by far the most painful dev platform of the three.

Unless you really like programming like it's 1985 (a not insignificant number of people really do), in which case it's great.

[white_devil]

Unless you really like programming like it's 1985

Care to elaborate?

[prodigal_erik]

It's 2011, and iOS developers are somehow persuaded to accept a crude imitation of Smalltalk and waste time on "do I need to box this int in a NSNumber?" and "did I get a SIGSEGV because I called [super dealloc] before [field release]?", when the first Smalltalk implementation handled this minutiae automatically on less powerful hardware nearly forty years ago.

[trezor]

It just changed the whole industry and showed How It's Done.

I may not like your tone, but if nothing else you are correct about this point. Apple was clearly the company who made everyone else understand that delivering a good smartphone involved good software in addition to hardware and that good hardware alone was worthless. For this they deserve recognition.

That being said: They created a platform, a very simple and limited platform, which worked adequately for people of limited needs. And for an initial release it was absolutely stunning.

That said, this does in no way translate into a platform which ages and evolves well. My complaints are mostly in this department and this is where I think Android is (and will remain) miles ahead of iOS.

[white_devil]

It has aged and evolved well. A platform cannot both be weak and unsophisticated and show the world how a platform should be done.