Recently I’ve read some blog posts on the general Android hardware/software design. Especially this post and the mention on DF triggered some emotion!

My point is that I really don’t think that Android missed the target with the hardware back button. Not at all. I actually think it is the most useful button.

The thing is – I use both Android and iOS on a daily basis – and I’m not sure that is the case for many people. When I am using my Android devices I really use the back button a lot and when I use my iOS devices I keep complaining that it is not there.

The example given in the article mentions the Twitter app. Let’s all agree to leave the Twitter app out of this discussion – it is clearly broken. When I get a notification about a new mention on Android and press it the app fails to load the tweet. The fact that I can’t get to the Twitter app main screen is not really a problem with my hardware – it is the result of bad app design!

When I use my Android phone I usually read news (actually I just process news feeds and send relevant articles to Instapaper using the Read Later for Instapaper app). When I get an e-mail, text message or someone mention/writes me on Facebook I get a notification. Pressing the notification takes me to the app handling the notification and when I am done – I press the back button – and by magic I am back in my news processing cycle – amazing!

When I actually read news – which I usually do on my iPad – I use the Instapaper app. It is very nice – but when someone e-mails me e.g. I get a notification (luckily I’m describing the iOS 5.0+ flow!!!) and press it – which takes me to the app (so far not very different from the Android story). The trouble starts when I want to get back to the article I was reading. If I press the software back button in Twitter/Facebook/Mail/etc. I go to someplace inside the app! If I want to get back to news reading (and trust me – I really need to get back there!) I have to press the button (no need to call it names – there is only one) which takes me to the home screen where all my apps are (wtf!!). Here I need to locate the Instapaper app – it might be on another page (it is where I left it though – but WTF?!) – and press it to re-open the program. Alternately I can choose to double-press the button (see this flowchart for more information – seriously WTF!!!?!!) and get the list of recent apps and choose Instapaper.

As you can see – I clearly need to adjust my use. Trying to apply “the Android way” on iOS gets me frustrated. Using “the iOS way” on Android is just a silly waste of time.

To me this isn’t really about what mobile OS is right or wrong! iOS delivers a very strong single-running-application frame that can be used to very tightly control the user experience without thinking about any other app than your own. And iOS does this very effectively and very good. Android on the other hand is made to display activities. An activity is a single screen in an application. Activities stack and the hardware back button takes the user backwards through the stack. This is very powerful – especially considering the ability to mix activities from different apps on the activity stack!

Android and iOS handle stuff very differently. This is because they are two very different operating systems – made for not-so-different devices. They each handle their specific task very nicely – in my humble opinion. The real problem is lazy conversions – the Twitter team should clearly have done a better job understanding the two platforms instead of trying to make a one-to-one conversion.

As I said in the beginning – I like Android and I like iOS – and I love developing apps for both!

The rating system only has one mayor flaw!

Most users don’t acknowledge that the apps are moving targets. Most apps are updated frequently in response to user comments and suggestions. Therefore user comments and ratings must change to reflect this.

As an example: I wrote the Wake on LAN Client and released it to the Android Market. It quickly got a few ratings and some comments. In the description of the program I specifically stated that comments/suggestions should be e-mailed to me directly as there is no way to comment on the market. On july 26th the user Geronimo gave a one star rating and posted the comment “Keeps force closing when WiFi is disabled to save power…”. A few days later when I got the time to narrow down the problem I fixed it and released an updated version of the app. The problem is that the user comment + rating is still there – anyone checking out the program could think that this is still an issue and therefore not download the app.

The Wake on LAN Client is free and I made it to meet some personal needs. I would guess that the problem is even larger for paid apps!

My advice to people who comment and rate is: Please update your comments and ratings to match the current state of the app. Please don’t make comments or ratings based on crashed and/or flaws in the app before contacting the developer by e-mail – I am sure they will help you and possibly update their app to fix the issue.

The problem with the whole idea is that Google App Engine don’t allow me to handle data requests larger that 1 MB without going through the Blobstore interface. This would be now big problem for me except the fact that to use the Blobstore API my account should enable billing. The… Setup… Process… Of… Billing… And… Quotas… Is… Long… And… Hard… Geez! There are various (personal as well as non-personal) reasons that I just don’t feel like enabling billing on my Google App Engine account just yet…

So for now – this project has been shelved – at least for the Google App Engine platform – I am (as you would guess) still keen on the whole idea and will look into a more traditional development environment ASAP.

I am writing a simple file-sharing service – I tend to use the term ‘drop-box’ a lot when explaining about it. The concept has now been proven (sending e-mails back and forth – log-in – upload – storage etc.) so now I am looking for some cool graphics/icons on iconfinder to make it look good.

I will post a more thorough description of the application – with links – as soon as I’m done with the first public version.

I would really recommend anyone who takes programming seriously to have a look at it. What I’ve seen so far is very nice. I mean VERY nice.

The concept and idea behind the language (we need a new systems programming language) is very good – I’m sure this will be big! And those of you caring about size and speed – well – go manage your own memory!