Hmm, I think a lot of people are missing the whole point in this article. I do around 60% Ruby on Rails, 35% iOS and 5% Android dev. The idea around a "lean" startup being, that an MVP, or each new feature, or even testing a change to a previous feature is usually done in quick succession. This being testing with current users over a period of say, a week, and then from the results, changes can be made and the team have learned from the testing.
So really, Android allows for this quick succession of testing features and iterating as quick as possible, with even to a few hours turnaround. Also, that it would cost a lot in development time to get something "just right" for the App Store for it to be accepted, whereas with Android you can keep on iterating and pushing changes without having to spent a huge amount of time making everything look perfect, and be absolute minimal in terms of bugs.
I love iOS development, and yes, I agree with most people on here about the revenue from iOS, the people paying for apps, Apple's process of helping keep out most malware etc. etc., but for the sake of a "lean" startup, spending extra weeks testing apps making sure it's completely bug free and "looking good enough" for iOS, as well as the wait for Apple to accept the application (and then for users to download the update, in the case of iOS 7, this has been solved), Android is a much better dev option for these changes.
Of course, when the team knows that the app is something that people care for, and they have a decent knowledge of what users want, what features they use, and the kind of value that the mobile app brings to them, then they can go ahead and make the best possible iOS app.
TL;DR
Saving time, money and quick iterations, learning from customers and getting quick data for problem validation, is much easier and faster on Android, than the process on iOS. Think Lean Startup.
As a mobile app user, I don't want daily updates from your app as you "iterate" away and try to figure out what to build. I want to download the finished product that works.
I'm not your free beta testing service. If you want to test concepts, do proper market research.
Well then you wouldn't be the early adopter :) The idea is to test it against early adopters who don't mind about these quick changes and are less worried about bugs, because the idea/product is something that's good enough to help you in some way, shape or form.
May I ask, what's proper market research? Considering you can get so far with "proper market research", but it definitely doesn't tell the whole picture. People often don't know they have a problem until one is solved and a good way.
I should have said, "traditional market research" instead, including trend and competitive analysis, segmentation, primary research such as focus groups and surveys, prototyping in front of a representative sample of users, etc.
An iterative approach is fine, once the above basics have been done, but if you need to deploy code changes in an app every day or even every week, the product is probably not ready for V1 yet.
Well of course all that is done before all of the developing of the app. The idea is to reduce the amount of uncertainty by not creating a full blown app that has had a lot of time and money put into it, when some of the features aren't helping in terms of getting new customers, keeping old customers and bringing any value to the product/service.
Isn't beta testing a problem more suitable for a third party service (https://testflightapp.com/)? Using app store to distribute beta quality product is a subpar solution IMHO.
Yes, TestFlight is absolutely great for beta testing.
However, in the startup sense, it's not exactly beta testing, it's testing the market, so beta testing would be fine to test something you've built works, but by no means will show what people will think of the app/product.
> Also, that it would cost a lot in development time to get something "just right" for the App Store for it to be accepted, whereas with Android you can keep on iterating and pushing changes without having to spent a huge amount of time making everything look perfect, and be absolute minimal in terms of bugs.
This is highly misleading. The App Store review process does delay iteration, and heavily crash apps are rejected but there is no requirement to spend a huge amount of time making things look perfect or absolutely minimal in terms of bugs.
So really, Android allows for this quick succession of testing features and iterating as quick as possible, with even to a few hours turnaround. Also, that it would cost a lot in development time to get something "just right" for the App Store for it to be accepted, whereas with Android you can keep on iterating and pushing changes without having to spent a huge amount of time making everything look perfect, and be absolute minimal in terms of bugs.
I love iOS development, and yes, I agree with most people on here about the revenue from iOS, the people paying for apps, Apple's process of helping keep out most malware etc. etc., but for the sake of a "lean" startup, spending extra weeks testing apps making sure it's completely bug free and "looking good enough" for iOS, as well as the wait for Apple to accept the application (and then for users to download the update, in the case of iOS 7, this has been solved), Android is a much better dev option for these changes.
Of course, when the team knows that the app is something that people care for, and they have a decent knowledge of what users want, what features they use, and the kind of value that the mobile app brings to them, then they can go ahead and make the best possible iOS app.
TL;DR
Saving time, money and quick iterations, learning from customers and getting quick data for problem validation, is much easier and faster on Android, than the process on iOS. Think Lean Startup.