[password1]

There's a saying in mobile development that in most companies the Android version of the app is a second class citizen. It usually brings substantially less money and so less money are invested in it. As a result the Android team is often understaffed and the app is almost always behind in feature development, less polished and with overall worse UX and more bugs compared to the iOS app.

Also iOS still has a community of iOS only indie devs that publish polished apps for iOS, it's very common to find very popular iOS app with very curated UX that are exclusive to that platform and have a good fanbase.

[gunalx]

The indie dev market is a flip flop, I have seen many great apps only available on android as well.

[atomicnumber3]

This is more because the barrier to entry is so much lower.

Android: have laptop that can do virtualization (...so basically ever laptop that can also do this:) and have enough ram to do run Android studio. Then you theoretically also need an Android device but even that's just because I assume you want to use the app you're making. That's it.

iOS: $100/yr entry fee, plus you need Apple hardware, plus a "server" mode Apple hardware (Mac mini?) if you want to alt store and I assume your main device is a laptop.

Just the money thing and the hardware thing is a huge stumbling block. I know it's rounding error for any even semi serious business but also let's be real, a ton of very important software is basically run on the budget of "the software devs main job and/or EU welfare state benefits".

[econ]

The www wins. All you need is something that can run a browser. You edit a line, save, refresh and there it is, the real finished product, not emulation.

Apps have terrible reliability too. I just wanted to order a pizza, the restaurant website offered a button for the play store and app store.

There it said the app was for an outdated version of Android.

Perhaps it had been like that for a long time? But lets imagine it happened today. Where are you to get your orders from? Ahh yes, the website.

If apps didn't get the icon on the home screen 90% wouldn't have a reason to exist.

Bunch of pictures with descriptions and an add to cart button. One shouldn't even need to write code, it should be as simple and obvious as serving a document. In stead you need a full time carpenter to keep the store running. The counter and shelves spontaneously collapse, doors regularly get stuck, light fixtures rain down from the ceiling.

People trying to sell pizza deserve better, we can do better.

[kwanbix]

The only place where this happens is in the US. In the rest of the world Android rules with 70% or more of the market share.

[password1]

Market share is not really relevant about this, what matter's here is which platform drives more revenue and that's iOS pretty much everywhere. These companies are data-driven, they don't choose where to invest based on ideology or geography, but on ROI. iOS brings the majority of the money and so the majority of the investment goes there.

[pjmlp]

Since Android has 70% of the world market share, and there are countries where iOS is hardly a presence other than the country's elite population, those are quite a few customers they will be missing on.

Maybe they can keep the lights on with those 30%, I guess.

[password1]

Usually businesses that make money out of mobile apps are very data driven, I promise you that if they could make more money from Android they would already been doing it. They still have an Android offering, but it's underinvested because it brings less money.

[mghackerlady]

The thing is, iOS users are far more likely to actually pay for something on the app store or pay to remove ads

[pjmlp]

Thing is, many countries hardly have iOS users, yet they still have a local economy to serve.