"Android is suddenly in a lot of trouble"
First, read the linked article.
Okay, good. So this probably isn’t news to anyone, but recently I made the switch from agency-side (What’s up, Wonderfactory!), to product-side (What’s up, Fitocracy!). It’s been a hugely enjoyable move, but that’s for a later post. One thing has been consistent across both: development always starts for iOS before Android.
“But Android has a bigger marketshare than iOS!!” We hear that a lot at Fitocracy, and we love Android (more than half the team has Android devices). So, why iOS first?
I never understood why you ‘couldn’t’ like the Rolling Stones and The Beatles. Blur and Oasis. It always comes down to economics. If you’re an 11 year old kid whose saved up all their pennies from mowing lawns to buy one album, you’re going to spend some time evaluating both records.
The reality is a little more complex than simple activation numbers on devices (The metric that gets thrown round a lot in favour of Android). Back at The Wonderfactory we built apps for some of the biggest brands in the world. Our clients weren’t stupid (quite the opposite). They weren’t randomly deciding to develop for iOS because they were ‘fanbois’ . Every budget decision they make is based on calculated data. Site metrics. Testing. If they mess up, it’s on their shoulders and will be bad for their career and fortune of the company (same thing goes at Fitocracy). Obviously, people aren’t that cavalier. Informed decisions are made from data that suggests that people aren’t as willing to spend money on the Android platform as they are on iOS and that a large number of Android users might just be using their device as a replacement, non-smart, phone.
Hopefully, I don’t need to repeat all of the other reasons cited in the linked article. Businesses have limited budgets; you have to make decisions based on projected returns.
In short: you get to the other platforms as soon as it makes viable business sense.
Some PR just writes itself (you’re looking at the bottom of the home page).
LIFE 75 - A collaboration between LIFE and The Wonderfactory. Available for the iPad. $12.99
To celebrate its 75th anniversary, LIFE’s editors have drawn on its extraordinarily rich photo collection to produce the LIFE 75 App, a selection of the very best of LIFE. Offering a unique viewing experience, the LIFE 75 App features more than 200 photos and related magazine covers, along with video and audio clips that tell the story of how LIFE was made.
Features Include:
- A unique interactive layout, presenting LIFE’s greatest photos in landscape view and related covers in portrait mode
- Numerous audio clips featuring LIFE’s past and present editors and photographers, providing exclusive insight on their time at LIFE
- Video clips in which LIFE’s most brilliant photographs tell how they got their shots
- An interactive game, Editor’s Choice: Can you choose the photo that made the cut?
- Galleries of rarely seen photos, available only in LIFE 75
- Multiple navigation points, including a “decades bar” that sorts the photos from the 1930s to the 2000s.
Some of the topics
- Up Close with the Stars: Hollywood’s brightest lights gave unfettered access to their lives. The result: special pictures of the likes of Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor.
- Memorable Moments: LIFE; was always present to capture the crucial instant, from Gen. Douglas MacArthur landing in the Philippines to Martin Luther King Jr. launching his civil-rights crusade.
- In the Wild: LIFE offers a menagerie of the exotic and domestic, the cute and the terrifying.
- At War: LIFE’s intrepid photographers brought home the horror and the heroism, including images that helped changed how Americans felt about Vietnam.
- Heroes and Villains: LIFE made unforgettable portraits of some of the most admired and reviled people of our time.
- LIFE Classics: The sailor kissing the nurse. The Marlboro Man. LIFE published images that became nothing short of iconic.
- Magical Places: The Taj Mahal by moonlight, Mt. Everest in sharpest daylight. Witness some of the world’s greatest scenic and architectural wonders.
1000 Places goes live for the iPad. Built by The Wonderfactory. Free.
Foodily - Foodily is the simple way to pair your own food photos with recipes from across the web that inspire you. Get instant updates from your friends on their favorites so discovering new recipes is easy. Free.
Coverage on TechCrunch.
Built by The Wonderfactory.
Thank you, Steve.
Love,
The Wonderfactory
The Wonderfactory helps Meredith Publishing launch Better Homes & Gardens for the iPad.
Designer? Working on iPad apps? At 5pm EST, you need to stop what you’re doing and watch this; The Wonderfactory and Meredith are co-presenting at the RJI.
They’ll be running through the creative process behind the App of the week winning Better homes & Gardens Celebrate! app.
