WWDC 2012 keynote roundup. Thanks superchunk!

[rocketpig]

superchunk said:

rocketpig said:

superchunk said:

Since iOS is popular due to iPhone iPod and now iPad, a dev an make a lot of money and have relatively easier, but higher up front cost, by starting with iOS and since Android is massive on clearly king of marketshare, they can have no up front cost and a longer dev / test cycle.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you claiming that initial development cost is higher on iOS than Android?

Yes.

iOS you have to own a Mac and buy a developer license. Android you can own anything and simply download the SDK/Eclipse. So yes upfront costs are big difference.

In this case, hardware is waaaaaaay down the list on developer cost. You can go buy a Mac for $600 that will run the SDK, even less if you go buy a used one. The developer license is like $200 or something.

On the other hand, even the most minimal app requires hundreds of man hours to produce. If you only have to check and develop for one or two OSes that cover 95% of the userbase, the time you save is going to be massive compared to testing for 2.2, 2.3, 3.0, 4.0 like you have to do on Android. You'll make up that hardware "cost" in less than a week's time if you're a one-man developer crew, one or two days if you're a more typical 2-4 man crew. Let's not forget about testing different chipsets, resolutions (not to mention the massive amount of time it requires to generate art for multiple resolutions), etc.

Not to mention that if you're serious about development, you have to go buy a veritable shit-ton of Android devices for testing versus two for iOS (current iPad and iPhone).