Why I am more and more fed up with this comparison
Yesterday, during the WWDC, Tim Cook reminded us all of a fact :
Proportionally, more iOS devices are running the latest version of iOS than Android devices running the latest version of Android.
There is no need in denying that. Actually, Google is well aware of the problem and has been for a long time. Lately, they announced project Treble which is an attempt to mitigate this problem.
Nevertheless, as the title of this article says, I’m fed up with this comparison. Not because it’s not true but because it’s not a fair comparison and I will tell you why.
On the user’s point of view
Unlike iOS, Android has a lot of its apps updated through the Play Store.
Indeed, for iOS users, missing out on the latest version of the OS equals to missing features in Apple’s applications (E.g.: Safari, Maps, Keyboard, App Store, etc.) . On the contrary, Android users receive updates to core apps on a weekly basis (dare I say “on a daily basis” ?). Google’s apps minimum supported version is reaching further than you’d imagine :
As of current numbers, supporting 4.0+ is ~99.2% & 4.1+ is ~98.40% of active devices. And I’m only citing Google apps. Most of us developers are also supporting applications for Android 4.0+ or 4.1+. Some of us are a bit more extreme and only support 4.4+ which is still a good 89.6% of active devices or 5.0+ which is 71.5%.
On the developer’s point of view
Speaking of developers, it’s true we don’t get to play with the latest API very quickly because of the fact Tim Cook mentioned. Well, that’s not entirely true. Google has been extracting important new component into libraries with support up to 4.0+ like RecyclerView and lately Arch & Room but also libraries with complete new features like Nearby, Vision API, etc.
On top of that, Google has done a tremendous job back porting most of the new APIs for us to use as soon as they happen like : Downloadable Fonts, EmojiCompat, VectorDrawable, etc.
Moreover, they provide us with probably the best IDE : Android Studio, which tells us when we are calling unavailable APIs.
Finally, icing on the cake, because they are provided as libraries, we don’t have to wait for a new OS update to fix bugs and add new features.
Conclusion
So, as you see, things are not so black and white as Tim Cook likes to present it. Yes, this is a problem and yes, it would be easier if everyone was running the latest version of Android. Nevertheless, it’s something when parody accounts mock the situation (which I actually find funny) :
But it’s something entirely different when a company like Apple is mocking the situation. The challenge Android engineers are facing is a lot more complex than the one Apple is facing and that is because they have to take care of a lot more devices, probably 100.000x more !
To me, it feels like Tim Cook is insulting the amazing work of all those engineers by pushing wrong ideas in the heads of Apple’s customers. Instead, he should focus on what make iOS a great OS and not degrading others for doing an amazing job with a very hard situation.
