But there is a huge difference. First, that desktop OS are ready for differences in hardware. As a developer, you usually don't care about screen size, or processor, or memory.
With Android, you have to. Some devices will not be capable to run your app, in some others your app will not even fit the screen... And, of course, because of different drivers, hardware and OS versions your app will not absolutely work on some phones because of some weird error. It's nowhere near Linux development.
I don't know if fragmentation is good or bad for the users, but for developers it's an infinite source of headaches. From my experience (I develop a Twitter client for WP7), even with a system with much less fragmentation than Android, every phone has unique features which can make your app crash for no reason, and you can only wait to be randomly corrected or get that specific model and debugging the app.
I don't think so. Even desktop OSes are not ready for such vast differences of today's hardwares.
Desktop-PC usually have approximately 100dpi screens, so the OS and the app generally don't consider dpi differences. So, if you've ever got a high dpi screen for Windows, you'll see the icons are frigging small.
Whereas, on mobile platform, we have screens ranging from 80dpi to above 300dpi. Android take dpi differences into account in the first place, to make sure, a same icon have almost same size on different dpi screens. It's a start.
I much doubted Microsoft or Apple would deal better with 'retina' desktop-pc coming in. Real trouble have just begun...
With Android, you have to. Some devices will not be capable to run your app, in some others your app will not even fit the screen... And, of course, because of different drivers, hardware and OS versions your app will not absolutely work on some phones because of some weird error. It's nowhere near Linux development.
I don't know if fragmentation is good or bad for the users, but for developers it's an infinite source of headaches. From my experience (I develop a Twitter client for WP7), even with a system with much less fragmentation than Android, every phone has unique features which can make your app crash for no reason, and you can only wait to be randomly corrected or get that specific model and debugging the app.