Software Developer and Performance Engineer
Android
Anything having to do with Android
Even more reasons to stick to the web for mobile apps
Feb 26th
Now Google has shut down Visual VoiceMail citing that they were not processing payments through the marketplace. More and more reasons just keep piling up. Back in 2008, Dave Winer wrote “Why iPhone is an unreliable platform.” It would be unfortunate to toss Android for the same reasons, but that might be where things are going. The web is open, unregulated, and completely free of anyone being able to shut you down. Sure, Apple and Google can cripple their browsers, but then there is Opera, Firefox, and other browsers that can be used for now. If they get locked out of the smartphones, then people will have to find something else. Developers need to be sure they can sell the work they author, or at the very least be able to distribute as they please. Anything less imposes limits on creativity and progress which will drive developers and users somewhere else. All of this is probably about money, pure and simple. There is a lot of it at stake, and those making it want to make more. I just hope they don’t kill the goose which laid this golden egg.
Companies may go to the web instead of native iPhone
Feb 22nd
It appears that there is a better path for many companies than just going to Android. That would be web applications. The iPhone sports a great web browser as does the Android and other mobile devices. Mobile Safari could block many sites or cripple functionality in order to block many applications that have decided to drop iOS and go to the web. But doing so would hurt the user experience on the iPhone and would be a policy sure to upset the masses.
Readability posted an open letter to Apple explaining their thoughts on the matter which I think are true for many companies. Apple has made it difficult or virtually impossible to target iOS as a platform with their new rules. Companies want to create a native apps in order to improve the user experience. If they are not able to do that, they will do their best with what they have and if they make fantastic web applications, that will drive web technology further and make it the platform of choice. It is open, no one controls it, and is everywhere. The comments on the open letter suggest that Apple will have to change their tune since so many are mad and the rule change. We will have to wait and see. But if it pushed open software, open platforms, and open business models; I hope they hold out long enough for it to take hold as I think most companies benefit when they are free to innovate and not have to cater to the whims of a platform owner.
Bitten by the sharedUserId attribute in Android
Aug 20th
While doing some work to create a second version of an Android application, I got hit with log errors that said my application database was not accessible. In fact, all data was not available to the application. After some digging, I found the following 2 issues relating to this problem.
- Issue #3763 If you decide to change the sharedUserId value, application will not have access to its data.
- Issue #1227 If you add sharedUserId to your application when it was not there before.
So the short answer is, I have to write content providers to get the data from the old version to the new one. I was hoping to just copy the application files but of course, the simple route is blocked.
The lesson to be learned is that the sharedUserId value should ALWAYS be set on an application. That way you have the choice of creating an upgrade, pro, paid, etc version of your application. Otherwise you will have to spend time creating content providers to copy the information over since you won’t be able to share the information.