Why Are There So Many iOS-Only Apps?
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But I would imagine that they're the ones that let you do things that Apple doesn't let you have access to.

What is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. I'm Andrew. And I am Adam. And Adam is sitting where I'm normally sitting. And I don't make the rules, but I think that means you're hosting now. It's bonus episode time. I stole your seat. I took it. The drum, that was an accident.

It worked. Atlas is still on the boards. Thank God. Okay. So this episode is going to be all about why there are so many iOS apps. Why there are so many iOS only apps in particular. So Marques, you are famously a dual wielder of phones. You have Android. You have iPhone in both pockets at any given time. It's true. What are those two phones right now? Currently, it's the iPhone 16 Pro in, I guess it's just black. It's

Space black maybe and then the Samsung Galaxy s25 ultra in I think they call it Silver blue. That's a weird name something like that. There's no way they call it silver blue, right? I'm gonna look that up while we continue Yeah, okay. So in your experience having two phones for the past what ten years? Yeah, are there any apps that you wish were on both devices or that you avoid using just because it's only on iOS only I

Oh, constantly. Yeah. I mean, one of the things we've talked about is to-do list apps, and one of them will float across my radar, and the first thing that I'll check is, is it iPhone only? Like, it happens a lot. So if it is, do you download it? Do you move forward? If it is, it makes me less likely to want to plunge and really check it out, because I know I spend a lot of time on the Android phone, and I want to be able to use it on both. So yeah, it's kind of a deal breaker for me if it is iPhone only. Andrew? Andrew?

First of all, it is called Silverproof. There's also pink, gold, and white silver as different colors. Wow, unbelievable. All one word. Turns out if you just combine colors, you get new colors. Who'd have thought? No one. You've never had an iPhone. I've literally never been an iPhone user. And you just recently got an iPad Mini. I did get an iPad Mini. Did you install any apps on the iPad Mini that you've been hearing everyone talk about that were iOS only? Every single app on my iPad is like...

- Probably a Google forward app. Like everything I downloaded was a lot of things just on my phone already that I have then the iPad version of for a bigger screen. - So you're using your iPad mini as like a conduit for Google services. - Yeah, it's like a, I really like it to like walk around the office and have Google tasks on which is terrible on the iPad and like stuff like that. - Nice. What phone are you using right now? - S24. - And how does it feel to be so much worse than us?

Can I just say, I'm seriously debating getting the S25 solely because they made a case that's a crock. And I really might try to get the S25. That's mind-blowing to me. Not to derail the conversation. I don't even know what we're talking about. But, yes. Somewhere in a Samsung marketing department,

you are someone's like dream customer they pitched this idea and they were like someone will upgrade from the most recent samsung phone to the new one just for this case yes and that's you it might be me but yes to answer your question i i find it i don't think alex has ever had an iphone but i feel like i might be one of the only people in the office who have like never at any point in my life been an iphone user interesting and i think the iphone's great yeah also which is even funnier but

And I've had the opportunity to do it plenty of times. Ellis, have you ever had an Android phone? Yeah, my first two phones were Androids. Do you remember what they were? Yeah, one of them was a Samsung Intercept. Oh, wow.

And the other one was a Kyocera Rise. And I loved those phones. I always said Kyocera. I don't know if I'm wrong. Are these what? Oh, I always said Kyocera. Smartphones? I mean, they're Android phones. Oh, true. Okay, fair. That's a good answer. You heard it here first. Just having Android does not make a phone smart or good. This is a fact.

Andrew Manganiello, everybody. 2025. Okay, so personally, and you guys know this, I always jump between iOS and Android. I have no loyalty to anyone, and it causes me nothing but headaches. All the time when I switch between the two operating systems, I lose access to a ton of apps, and it's very annoying. And that is the thing that always, like,

Bugs me. Like, it's not so much the blue bubble, green bubble situation. I don't really care about that because I use WhatsApp or Signal or like all the other things. Yeah, I'm so much better. Hey, it's our audience. Just use WhatsApp. But...

There are so many other apps that become like a part of my just day-to-day existence that I just lose access to. Like when Ellis first started here, he put me on this app called Copilot. It's a budgeting app on the same thing. You use it too? No, Marques put me on it. Really? Yeah. When he put out a video a year or two before I started working here called What Apps Are On My Phone. Yeah. It was in there. Copilot's one of them. Well, I've been influenced through influence. So...

I downloaded the Copilot app. It was awesome. It was my budgeting app. And then I switched to the S24 Ultra and just lost all my like budgeting. Like they don't have an Android app. There's also Flighty, like we've spoken about. That is an amazing flight app that tracks all your things. If you're like running between gates and you're about to miss your flight, it will tell you like the quickest reroutes and everything. It's like a very powerful app.

There's this app that I use called Gentler Streak, which is for my workouts. And it is also iOS only and Apple Watch only. So when I switch, I just lose all of that. I'm sensing a theme here. Yes. You lose everything always when you switch from iOS to Android. Correct. It's very rarely the other way around. Very rare. Yep. But that's what I wanted to get to the bottom of. I want to find out why there are one,

so many iOS only apps, you know, like there's not a lot of Android only apps. Like there's a few, but mostly iOS only. And then, I mean, I guess, like you said, it's my fault for switching in the first place between operating systems, but also not really because I don't know why me switching my phone has to mean that I lose like my budgeting app, you know, like that's crazy to me.

So I wanted to talk to a bunch of developers and figure out like why this is the case. Let's get to the bottom of this. Why are there so many iOS only apps and not both cross platform? So without knowing anything that we are about to get into, just off of your like gut feelings and your years of experience higher than average, you know, consumer experience, why do you think there are so many iOS only apps? Who wants to go first? I have an answer. Yeah. What's your answer? Um,

I'm not quite a developer, but we do have an app that we've worked on developing for a year. Really? Yeah. Oh, I did not know that. Yeah, it's called Panels. Oh, cool. It's a pretty sweet wallpaper app. So the main answer that I've found is that when you're developing an iOS app, you develop one version of the app, and with minimal effort, it works across hundreds of millions of devices, across a variety of screen sizes, iPhones from the most recent to four, five, six, seven-year-old devices,

Easily getting it on an iPad. It might not be the most beautiful iPad app, but it works on iPads It's just instantly seamlessly compatible and with Android this fragmentation world Means that you have to do more work to get it to work with the same number of devices so if I'm just an indie Low-budget developer and I want to maximize my ROI make an iPhone version of the app and that's your easiest way to reach the most people and

And then, of course, it's the stickiness factor after that. So if you have people on iPhone that really like it, they'll continue to use it. Yeah. Andrew? Yeah, I mean, I feel like the simplest answer is if you're just talking about market share, especially in the U.S., Apple has so much, but you can make an app that fits nicely into every single iPhone.

and that will fit into like a third of the total Android phones that came out that year. There's just so many Android phones and Android phone sizes and everything that it's like, it's so much more work to get them to play nicely with everything. - Okay. You know, I had similar thoughts at first.

But I feel like those are just like gut instincts, you know? You do have some actual experience with like building an app. But I really wanted to like get to the bottom of it and talk to people that live this life and figure out what is going on. So I hit up Christian Selig, friend of the pod. He's a developer that, I don't know, listener, if you guys don't know, he made Apollo for Reddit. And when it got shut down like two years ago, I think at this point. It's too long. Yeah, two years ago. He also made the Juno app for...

Apple vision Pro which is the the YouTube player that also got shut down, but he does make pixel pals Which is one of my favorite iOS only apps then I also reached out to Karn an Android engineer at notion and I wanted to talk to him about the Android side of things and then John will put me in touch with one of his buddies this guy called Curtis Herbert who is a developer that has successful apps on both and

iOS and Android. Okay. So we're checking all the boxes here. I wanted to like cover our bases. Spoiler alert.

It's pretty much exactly what you guys said. But the details are actually really fascinating to think about. Yeah, like when I said it out loud, in my mind, I could immediately hear all the people who know how to develop saying like, who cares about screen sizes and stuff? I'm sure like it doesn't account for that already because nothing's static. So that's like my guess into that. But I'd like to know why that variation makes it so much harder. Because I don't know...

The time I made a website when I was 14, it was static and fit in an 800 by 600 web page. It wasn't responsive. Yeah. So now you've got all these different sizes. I'm sure nothing is static anymore. It can probably pretty easily fit into easy in the terms of the developers, impossible for...

peons like me. I also think, and maybe you'll have more info on this, that Apple has maintained the same scaling from iPhone to iPhone year after year after year where you can imagine the differences between an S25 Ultra and their 2830 by 1440 screen scaling that perfectly to the

Oppo Find N5 with a crazy different aspect ratio and resolution is a lot more challenging. MARK MANDEL: We'll find out because we are going to talk to everyone. Actually, Karin had a really good reason why he thinks that Android has a superpower that in the future people might start leaning that way, which I found really interesting. How's that for a hook? You're going to have to stick around and find out. KARIN LEWIS: Is it AI related? MARK MANDEL: Yes. KARIN LEWIS: Take it away, me.

Okay, so the whole point of this is to figure out why there are so many iOS only apps. So I thought we'd break this down into three main sections.

The first is why iOS in the first place? Like, why can't you start building on Android and then double back and do iOS? Why do so many developers instinctively turn to iOS first? The second is, okay, let's say you start on iOS, right? You have a successful app. Now, why not double back and build an Android app? Android is like most of the world. You know, you would think that that would be enough of an incentive to then double back and build the Android version.

but it's not. And the third point is why not use tools that let you do both? You know, I just thought of an equivalent for this as a content creator. If you think of different platforms the same way. Yeah. Like if you're an iOS only developer and you make an iPhone app and you're really successful there, that's like being an Instagram

influencer and making Instagram native content and getting successful there. And then the question is, well, why don't you put it on YouTube too? YouTube's another platform. And it's like, well, I could, but it wouldn't really be YouTube native. I would have to really focus on the YouTube part of it, but I'm doing so well on Instagram. I might as well double down on it and just become really good with Instagram. And it just feels like a similar conversation in my head anyway. In this analogy, what is TikTok? TikTok.

Windows. No, it's actually, it's just like whatever Huawei phone, like it's maybe going to go away, but maybe like why keep working on it if it's going to disappear. As an individual developer, there's the aspect of where to focus your time is a really tricky question to ask and a really valuable question because as one person, you only have so much and it's valuable to figure out where you want to direct all that time. And for me, I've never found there to be a

a way where I can kind of have the cake and eat it too and develop for both platforms. So it's kind of a factor of, um, like even back when I was developing Apollo, I was kind of of the mind. Uh, there was a lot of requests for the Android app for instance, but I knew every, every, you know, week, every 10 hours I put into this, um, potential Android app would be 10 hours potentially taken away from making the iPhone app that much better. Um, so it's kind of like an opportunity cost in a way.

And I think that's how a lot of small teams, like you can't get much smaller than one person kind of think about it in that,

I've got this finite amount of time. Where is my energy best spent? Which I guess is fair because, you know, if you're like, these are both full-time jobs, basically, if you're an iOS engineer and an Android engineer, those are two completely different like career paths, you know? So it takes a lot of work. I get why it's difficult to split yourself in two, but that still doesn't answer the question, like why iOS? Like it could work the other way around. You could start on Android, make an Android only thing and then port it over to iPhone.

But it always happens on iOS. Oh, there's another thing we forgot to mention. Oh, what? Which is that iPhone users spend more on apps. Yeah. Yeah. That is true. You might be getting to that. Definitely. Okay. Yeah. So Karin says... You know, it's interesting. I think, like, especially here in, like, North America, you definitely do see, like, a prevalence of, like, iOS-only apps.

And, you know, you mentioned some of the reasons for that, you know, it's like money to be made on that side. I think like the average spend for an iOS user is higher than what you'd see for like an Android user. But I think also just like over the last little while, I think iOS devices have become a larger market share in North America. And so, yeah.

people who develop apps probably have their first experience with like an iOS device instead of an Android device. Not necessarily true in the rest of the world, but definitely here in North America. And I actually hadn't thought about that, that like aspect of it, and it pains me to say it, but you know, we are old, us three here in this room. Do you know what happened 18 years ago in 2007? The Crunchwrap Supreme.

Well, the iPhone came out in 2007. The iPhone came out in 2007. Yeah. I remember a time before iPhone. This is true. Not a lot of people do. No, I remember. Yeah. Yeah. I remember. Just saying I remember. I know, right? Makes me feel so old. I do. Back in my day. I remember.

I remember when there was a time before smartphones, period. You know, like the flip phone and stuff. My first cool phone was the T-Mobile Sidekick. Did you guys ever have that? I remember having friends that had Sidekicks. And you ever wanted one? It was cool to have. I think I probably wanted one. Yeah. I always felt left out not having one. I mostly remember the iPhone coming out because I, well, it was AT&T only.

and i wanted the android version of it and the first thing that felt super or you know i guess it wasn't i didn't want the android version of it back then i wanted the non-iphone version of it the lg voyager oh yeah not really a smartphone but if you remember screen touch screen on the front i feel like we were mostly focused on touch screens yeah less of the smart capabilities though and then you'd flip it open like a hot dog and then it would have a keyboard and screen i one time tripped off a sidewalk fell face first

running to go to the bathroom, opened my phone up, saw the front screen was completely shattered, went, phew, at least I have the inside screen, opened it up, and glass just fell out of the inside of it. So I broke both screens. That's impressive. Mine too, yeah. You had a Voyager too? I had a Voyager, yeah. And you broke it? I broke it. It was huge. It slipped out of my pocket getting out of a cab, and I curb stomped it. Oh, great.

And it like was open and I landed my foot just like bent it backwards over the curb in one step. I was like, it's toast. That's rough. Unfortunate. Yeah. Wow. Well, yeah, for a lot of people, the iPhone was their first like phone experience, you know, like for people younger than us, which like,

It's funny to think about when you think of trends and the market and stuff like that. It makes sense that people whose first experience was on an iPhone and on an iOS device, when they grow up and learn programming and learn developing and get into this world of technology, they just want to do the thing that they already have. You want to build an app for the thing you've been using your whole life. And here in North America, we have...

a dominant market share of people using iOS devices. It's not necessarily the case globally, but definitely here in North America. Marques, you are someone that has been

Doing tech videos for how long? When was your first video? The one that keeps getting recommended to me every six months? 09. 09? Yeah. That's two years after the iPhone. Yeah. What was your first iPhone review? So my first iPhone review wasn't until, I want to say the 5S. The 5S? So iPhones were coming out and I was getting comments about, why aren't you doing iPhone reviews? And I was like, I'm on Verizon, bro. I review what I can get my hands on. And I was doing all these Nexus's and all these other phones. And finally...

an iPhone was available that I could test and I just got it. That was the beginning. That's crazy. This just made me think of that, like we keep saying iPhone was AT&T only. Like that was a legitimate hurdle for US consumers back then. And to see so many people now be like,

Oh, the iPhone has this crazy market share. People are only buying iPhones. Back then, it was hard to buy an iPhone, and it still got to this point, despite for years it actually being... I had zero chance of getting one because I was on Verizon. Yeah, why do you think it became so dominant? The iPhone? Yeah. Have you ever used an iPhone? No.

I can give you a two-part answer. There's how it became dominant and then how it stayed dominant. You know what? I'll take the first one. How did it become dominant? It became... So the iPhone came out and it had genuinely impressive, innovative tech in it. And the multi-touch, the glass touchscreen, all the stuff that made the iPhone the iPhone. And then...

They kept it really simple and easy to use and very slowly iterated on it and it became better and better and more and more accessible And so that was a reason why it gained traction as this new better thing Competition caught up lots of people have lots of options now, but they have kept their market share by This ecosystem they've built around the iPhone this sticky effect where there's so much in the iPhone that it's hard to leave nothing comes with you and

Arguably, not even arguably, anti-competitive behavior on Apple's part. But also culture, like the blue bubble, green bubble thing is more than just Apple now. It's just people who have iPhones. It's a status symbol. It's a premium device. People think of Androids as knockoffs. It's a whole thing in the US. People are watching this in other countries like, are you serious? Like that's all happening independent of what Apple does. So that's why. Andrew, what's your take?

It wasn't a take. It was just thinking like, you know, now it's the green bubble, blue bubble status symbol aspect. Back then was it, were people moving? Like I would love to see the AT&T numbers of pre because Verizon is

at least what I thought, like that felt like the main carrier in the United States. One of the three biggest. One of the three biggest, but AT&T, I would not doubt if they got significant market share of this like innovative phone coming out, being exclusive on there. And that exclusivity sometimes means not as many means building hype. This is my memory as like a,

how old was i then what was it 2009 you said 2007 the iphone came out i was 17 you were 17 old yeah wow sorry you lived a whole life before the iphone yeah you were about to be able to vote and then the iphone came out and then it took it away um but why do you think it didn't take on like why do you think that didn't happen globally

No clue. Different markets behave and react to the same thing in different ways. So different price points hit different in different places. Different cultural influences hit different. Like the status symbol thing is true in other places too. Mm-hmm.

um and then people will buy an iphone and then pressure their friends into buying iphones but also like in places where they buy phones outright versus having a contract with their carrier and then spending 18 a month on a phone yeah that incentivizes very different behavior in let's just call it a random european country where the iphone is 500 and has these features and the huawei phone is 500 and has these features i'm just gonna buy the better phone i don't really care

I don't use iMessage. I just use WhatsApp. So it's just a hardware competition. And Apple can lose that sometimes. Ellis, how old were you in 2007?

I was in fourth grade. Oh my God. And I had one friend who had an LG chocolate. What? Oh. Because we were in fourth grade, so no one had phones. When did you get your first phone? I got my first phone when I was in eighth grade. My parents really didn't want me to have a cell phone at all. They were like super anti-cell phone. And I saved up.

my allowance pretty much the entire time I was in middle school and Until I had enough money for my Samsung intercept and a year's worth of service nice, and I did it myself damn it We came out the mud Who's on my grind? But yeah, so iPhone was not in my budget nice. Okay sleep back then yeah that makes sense as an eighth grader. Yeah, I

Yeah, so Christian had something to say about this. He said... iPhones globally are very much losing to Android, I think. Android has definitely won that war globally. But in North America, iPhones, I think, especially among teenagers, have an overwhelming market share. I think nearing 90% of...

And you have this market where like they dictate a lot of what goes viral and what, what matters, um, and what makes money and, and what gets marketed. Um, and when you have like a 90% market share of this group and even among adults, it's still very high North America, iPhone versus Android. Um,

So you get these percentages where you're just looking at it and you're saying, I have 90% or somewhere in that realm of users on this one platform that makes more money. Is it worth me spending...

absolute crap ton of time building this separate component that will have a much smaller, even marketable user base in aggregate. And statistically, they also spend a little less money. So it's a very hard value proposition, I think, for a lot of small teams. And of the friends I've talked to who also do maintain an Android app, some of them are happy with it. Some of them are like, it's a really tricky market because...

Android users statistically are just from like just running the numbers there, they spend less money than iOS users. - So you have teenagers in North America who have only ever used iPhones, growing up and engaging with apps that are only on iPhones, eventually becoming adults and buying those apps on iPhones at higher rates than their Android counterparts. And even Karin, the Android engineer at Notion completely agreed with that. He said, - I think definitely the first part I would agree with where it's like, if you're just trying to make money,

than like make iOS apps. Like there's more of a user base. There's like people are more willing to sort of like give you money for something that you build. And I don't know if necessarily that's true on Android. I think like the expectations are different. Just like the...

Yeah, the demographics of the people who use Android devices have certain expectations, as one would when they're making these decisions. Same reason you'd buy a PlayStation or an Xbox or whatever the case might be. And so the expectations are different. And so maybe it's a little bit harder to get people to part ways with their hard-earned money.

But that's not necessarily true for all things, right? A good example of this is probably like music apps, like a large streaming service. Like, you know, people pay the, you know, the whatever, nine, $10 a month for Spotify. And, you know, and it's like, you know, that's just, that's just what it is. But I think it's just like, it depends on what the need is. And I think most people's expectations and needs are different on Android. Yeah.

Did he compare which user is PlayStation, which user is Xbox? He did not. That would send our comments off the fucking rails. I could continue the analogy with Instagram versus YouTube. Oh, yeah. And you'll have to imagine for a second a complete lie, which is that Instagram has really great CPMs for content. So you're making... You're an Instagram-only...

content creator and there's great CPMs on Instagram, why would I leave and go make YouTube content? Well, globally, there's a bigger audience on YouTube, but the CPMs are lower. So you can work for that potentially larger audience with overall lower CPMs, or you could just stick to what you're doing really well, double down on Instagram, and that's a living. So you're saying Instagram is iOS. In this example, Instagram with really high CPMs is iOS. Okay, got it. And Andrew, you have to say.

playstation or xbox who's who i mean the obvious answer is that playstation is blue and it would be ios and that's yeah microsoft is green and would be android and i'm an xbox liker and what's your uh your handle on threads and blue skies people can yell at you uh i don't even remember probably for the best nice um yes overall his point was that

the expectations on Android are just different. So, so far, it seems like something we already knew. iOS users spend more. Therefore, there's more of an incentive for developers to build for iOS. Nothing groundbreaking there, but that can't be the only reason, right? Like, there has to be another reason. We'll find out after the break.

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Okay, before the break, we stated the obvious: iOS users spend more money on apps. That's a pretty good incentive for developers to build for iOS. But that can't be the only reason. I wanted to know what the experience was like developing for both platforms. Is building for Apple really that much better?

Okay, so both developers agree that you make more money on iOS. Let's be real. You're only making money on Apple's store if you're making money in the first place. Like most apps don't make money. You know, it's just like you're doing it because you want to do it and you want to like make an app. There are like commercial successes, I would say, like Karin brought up Flappy Bird.

That, I would say, is like a viral hit, you know, like or Wordle. Wordle that got bought by New York Times. We spoke with the creator. That is like a hit. You're making money on that somehow because it's in everyone's pocket. Wordle originally, though, was the viral hit. Yeah. And he bought it for like a million bucks. Right. Which is awesome. I'm not saying that. But like if you're thinking of like the absolute number one talked about app at a time, a million dollars feels...

Not that crazy. - I know, not that crazy. But you know, that isn't the case for most apps. Most apps don't make money, like I said. So I kind of wanted to figure out why do developers keep flocking towards iOS? Like, is there such thing as a developer lock-in?

Turns out there is. You know, specifically for Apple, not only do you need to learn Swift, but you also need a Mac to code on, and you have to spend $100 a year on their developer fee. It's not like it's like a one-time fee. It's like $100 every year that you have to do it. And, you know, if you're like a student who's like building an app on the side, like, do you want to be paying $100 a year on effectively another subscription for an app that you don't know will get off the ground?

And it's an interesting trade-off to make, but I think like, you know, Apple is notorious for, for sort of streamlining the, the sort of experience and, and development experiences is no different. Although I would, I would say that like people I've talked to about Xcode, which is the, the sort of like iOS development, um, like sort of environment, um, like, you know, don't really like it. And I've used it at, at like notion or, you know, and like other places just like, as like passing through or like making small changes. Um,

And like my experience is I'm like Android Studio is way better. So a little background. If you want to build an iOS app, you need to use a program called Xcode. And if you want to build an Android app, you need to use Android Studio. These are IDEs that... Wait, wait, wait. I know what IDE stands for, but just for our listeners who might not know, what does that mean? IDE is Integrated Developer Environment. And it's basically a text editor. Wait, wait, wait.

- Nice. - Nailed it. Basically a text editor that lets you run code in it. So you can't even develop for iOS unless you're running Xcode on their hardware. And then on top of that, you need to pay the $100 fee every year in order to be a developer for Apple. Now to be fair, Android also has a developer fee, but it's a one-time fee of $25. Not really the same.

So you would think that all of that friction would be a huge turnoff for people developing for iOS. But turns out that Christian said that it actually like works in his favor. Apple, through virtue of having so few devices that they both you can build apps, you can only build apps on Mac. So that's very controlled. You can only deploy it to a few devices. That's very controlled. They have this very controlled ecosystem.

that allows them to have a very refined developer experience. You download Xcode, you type some code, you compile it, you know, Bob's your uncle. On Android, like, it was very tricky. Like, back when I last tried, there was, like, two different Android IDEs you could, like, text editors you could choose from. And then from then, like, there was, like, 17 million devices you could choose from to, like, emulate it on. And the emulator was really slow. And it's, like, there's this, like, fragmentation that exists that...

It's very intimidating. - So like, yes, you have to like buy the hardware and then you have to buy the developer fee and you're paying for that and you have to use their program and everything like that. But like once you get over that hurdle and you're just like in that ecosystem, coding for the iPhone is like so easy. I found that interesting because I hadn't really thought of it in that way. I guess I'm like wired to instantly recoil from like anything that provides that much guidance.

But it turns out that when you're building a complicated program, having the guiding hand of Craig Federighi is actually kind of helpful. But Christian brought up another point, which is fragmentation. And you mentioned this at the beginning, too. You hear it all the time when it comes to Android software, and there's just too many devices and they all handle things slightly differently. Whereas Apple only has like 20 devices or something like that, like in total. So

So I called up Curtis Herbert who's a developer that has an app called Slopes which is pretty successful and works on both iOS and Android. So just as an example of one of the biggest headaches that he's run into while maintaining apps for both Android and iOS is the Samsung battery saving mode. The screen size is not the problem. This has actually been a huge point for slopes on Android is the device differences and the problem often isn't

the UI, it's everything else. So a great example is battery savers. There was actually a website out there, I forget the URL, but it was listing all the Android devices and basically how aggressive they were at killing apps and

for battery saving purposes. Samsung was at the top of this list forever. So a great example would be you're recording with slopes, you're using the GPS, you're clearly signaling to the system, "Hey, we're doing something that the user cares about here." Samsung wouldn't care. It would go in and just keep quitting slopes throughout the day

And we'd have to have all kinds of help articles for like, here's how to go in for like this hardware device and kill the battery saver or change the settings for slopes so that hopefully it keeps it alive. And then for this manufacturer, here's how to do this. It's just the fact that they would install so much other software like iOS. We can just it works the same on every iPhone. iOS works the same.

Android is not that story. Depending on the manufacturer you come from, they're going to have all kinds of custom tweaks and settings and all these things they do differently. And that can make life really hard. Yeah, my task manager app, TickTick, it has a function that it can remind you of a

notification for a task at some point at a specific date and time but it says hey just to make sure this works because it might not work on every single Android phone go into the settings and disable the battery saver function of this app and blah blah and it kind of gives you vague instructions to hopefully be generic for every Android phone but you have to go in and do that to guarantee you get the notification for the feature to work oh my god it just works on the iPhone yeah that's one of those things interesting yeah

So that kind of fragmentation makes it a little bit more difficult and intimidating for iOS engineers to dip their toe into the Android side of things. And then on top of that, Curtis said that a lot of his Android users just kind of expect the Android version of the app to not be a top priority.

And so that's actually one thing that's also been a challenge on the Android side of the house has been we've definitely noticed Android users are challenging because they are so used to being treated like the second class citizens of mobile phones. And so we've noticed the default assumption for a lot of them is that we don't care about Android and we're just phoning it in because so many apps do it that way. And

And we're genuinely trying. And like a good example was last September, you know, we always have when iOS comes out in September, we always have support for the new features and all that kind of stuff. And we launched with a couple of features alongside iOS and we,

Right away on Instagram, we get some Android users like, oh, well, there you go, not caring about Android again. It's like, it's iOS launch day. Like, of course we're going to have an iOS update. What do you expect here? And we've had users write in and be like, oh, it's really frustrating. You don't care about Android. It's like we have four years of constantly shipping updates.

and constantly trying to do right by the platform. And yeah, iOS is going to be a little bit ahead of Android just because I am the founder of the company. I'm an iOS developer. I don't sleep. I just write this code because it's my hobby. And like...

I don't expect my Android engineer to keep up with me in that regard. That would be unfair. So like, yeah, there's an unfair advantage there, but we try really hard to launch features at the same time when we can to not hold back Android. Like Android is constantly getting stuff and we're trying so hard to do it right.

And like when we reply to people and we're like, hey, you know, we're a small team, one iOS engineer, now two finally, but one iOS engineer back then and one Android engineer, like give us a break. They're like, oh my God, I'm so sorry. We just assumed like everyone else does it this way. But real quick, going back to the point about Android fragmentation, that doesn't just apply to the hardware or the software of the phones. It also applies to the design. There's also this other aspect of it, which is that I think Android is like very fragmented.

both as like an operating system, like how many devices it supports, but also as like a design aesthetic. And maybe this is just like the kinds of folks who build apps for iOS are naturally just more sort of like interested in the design. Yeah, and they just care a little bit more about the, and this is not to say that like internet engineers don't care about it, but maybe like on average, I think like,

Folks who use iPhones or developer iPhones are a little bit more interested in the aesthetics of the product. And then I think also iOS and the design language for just Apple, I guess, in general is very clean, very polished. And I think they have a lot of stuff that makes it easier for people to plug and play. And I think Android is trying to get to, like Google is trying to get to that stage where

Maybe a good example of this is like Material 3 is, you know, like they're pushing really hard on like trying to get Material 3 to be like sort of the common way that developers think about design. And that I think is a hope at making sure that like the experiences can get to that polish without the kind of investment that Android needs right now. So like in your head, if you had to pick YouTubers, one of them was, yeah, one of them represents an iOS developer and one of them represents an Android developer.

Do you have any of mine? I have two. Michael Reeves is Android. That's a great one. Michael Reeves is deaf for sure. That's why I love him so much. Although he probably... He probably uses iPhone though. He might use mine too. Totally. But his videos are Android. Yeah. His videos are Android. Whistle and Diesel is Android. Pure chaos. Who's an iPhone?

Dave 2D is an iPhone. Oh, sure. Yeah. That's a good one. I can see that. Very aesthetic. That's fair. Yeah. Maybe unbox therapy. Very, very consistent aesthetic is important. Yeah. I would argue if you want to do that, unbox would be Android because it's like a just do it live. Like not as pure. Yeah. Pure aesthetically. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, totally style wise. What about like Zach from Jerry Rig Everything?

That feels more Android because of what he's doing in the videos. He's taking things apart, putting it back together. I also had him as an Android developer in my head. Totally. What about Olier?

That would be an iPhone. Yep. Yes, that would be an iPhone. Right? That's just like, it feels right. Yeah. Those are like who I picture. Yeah, the vibes. That's who I picture. So let's be real. Aesthetics are important. And in this age of Apple that we're living in, there's an entire generation of engineers and product designers who were raised in the Apple way of doing things and the overall Apple aesthetic. You know, straight lines, minimal, elegant, simple, aluminum. Can I just throw something out there? You may. Okay.

I think the main reason I do not use an iPhone is because of the aesthetics. Really? And up until recently, they let you do it, but I like a very blank home screen. You could not do that on an iPhone. I thought it was super annoying. I don't know why everyone likes a cool background and then 40 app icons on their homepage. That seemed terrible to me. What do you have on your home screen right now? It's just my dock, a clock, and the search bar.

You could kind of do that on iOS. You can now. That's like only in the most recent update you can kind of do it. Close, yeah. Interesting. So it's like it's kind of part aesthetics, part customization because they could lock you into an aesthetic. But if you don't like the aesthetic, it's not great. So if you have customization, you can change it to your own aesthetic. Dub. And not only the aesthetics of Apple drive people in, unless you're Andrew, but...

Also, if you're an iOS developer, you can just like also make more money on that platform. So it's kind of like these two driving forces that are leading everyone to just like start developing on iOS. Um, but Curtis, the guy that I spoke with that has both apps, he actually really likes material design and what Google's doing right now. So that might not always be the case because that is a different aesthetic that Google has been like consistent with. I don't know. I would push back on keeping up design wise with Apple. Like I think they're doing their own thing. Uh,

And I definitely have respect for Material. I feel like once we got to the last three years of Material design, it's really started to click for me. I like it as a design language. I'm still an iOS guy. I like Apple's design language. But I definitely feel like Material is headed in the right direction. And I like it now. I like what we can do with it. Do they even call it Material U anymore? Material U. Material U 3? I don't remember them saying that word for like years. I think that's just as of like 14.

Yeah, I don't think they've like announced anything in that way. Like we have a new thing, but that's kind of the point. That's the good thing. Curtis was saying that like one of the things that people who develop for iOS really value about Apple is the consistency and the stability of like their design is their design for years. Google will just like change it up and be like that thing you were just doing for two years. Never mind. We're on this now. And with Material, Material You, right? Android 12, by the way.

Andrew at 12. Okay. That's like, it's been how many years now? And they're still going with it. It's like consistent. And that is going to start like the ball rolling down the hill and keep the momentum moving, moving forward. So it'll change this year. Calling it because you said that. Dude, if that happens. Oh my God. I hope not. I like material. Yeah. I do too. Yeah. I'm going to blame you if that happens. I'm going to bring this up.

Hiroshi's watching this like, I got him. Material You is one of my favorite design aesthetics and I miss my Pixel every day. But that said, it seems like Android really has an identity moving forward. It has its own aesthetic now with Material You. A more natural, curvy, whimsical feel that some people can relate to in the same way that there are those that relate to the minimal Apple aesthetic. But anyway, that's just about design. And this episode is about why there are so many iOS exclusive apps.

So what is it about fragmentation that causes iOS developers to not want to cross over to the Android side of things? I mean, Android developers deal with fragmentation all the time. You know, it can't be that big of a problem. So also with fragmentation, one of the things that they mentioned specifically

Specifically Christian. Christian was saying, even if they nail the developer tooling ecosystem, which I don't think they have, neither does Apple to be fair, but you also get this additional aspect once you're done where, holy crap, the user base you're deploying to is not a holistic, they're all on the same page. iOS, within six months of the new iOS version coming out, you can be damn sure the vast majority of people are on it.

So if there's a cool new dynamic island API or a new like notifications API or something that you want to play with, probably everyone's going to get it. And that's a cool thing to build an experience around. Android, like it's much more,

jagged and fragmented, which is a word that's been abused over the years. But like it's that new feature you're building, the phones that get Android 20 or whatever on now might not get that in aggregate and majority for three, four years. So that feature you're building now that you're super hyped about, like what, 5% of your users on Pixel phones might get it. Like that's not super exciting to develop for. On top of that, like when you develop for it and you optimize for that feature and it's out,

Not even for the dynamic island, but just for a new version of iOS. That will hit hundreds of millions of people the next week. The stat in front of me right now on Apple's website is 76% of all iPhones introduced in the past four years are on the latest version, iOS 18. That's crazy. I'm sure if you found the Android stat, it would be like, how many Android phones right now are on 15? Yeah, not a lot. Not that many. S25s, OnePlus 13s.

Pixels. That might be it. Maybe. So yeah, you get that instant turnaround of like hundreds of millions of people having the newest feature. And that was one of Christian's like biggest points was that you get this like positive feedback loop of like, I just worked on this thing for a month. The day it comes out on everyone's phones. Now my app like supports it and he's getting all this feedback on social media. And it's like a big community of people celebrating like this new thing that he just worked so hard on. Yeah. Versus on Android, you don't really get that. Yeah.

- Yeah, Pixel users will eat it up though. I got the latest version, I'm on top of it and I love that. - Yeah, but then Samsung users have to wait like three years until they're- - I just looked up on 14. - Yeah, so yeah, that's gonna be true. - Yeah. So it seems to me that developer lock-in is pretty real, but not for the technical reasons that I originally thought. And it has a lot more to do with how you see yourself and what kind of developer you aspire to be.

After the break, things will get a little bit more technical, but don't worry, it'll still basically be an Apple versus Android slugfest. I know that's what you're here for. The PC gave us computing power at home, the internet connected us, and mobile let us do it pretty much anywhere. Now generative AI lets us communicate with technology in our own language, using our own senses. But figuring it all out when you're living through it is a totally different story. Welcome to Leading the Shift,

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Okay, welcome back. So I'm calling this section the "Por qué no los dos" section, or "Why not both?" Because if I have an idea for an app and I think it's a killer idea, why should I have to choose Android or Apple? Why can't I do both? There has to be some way to do both, right? Well, luckily, there is.

But this is where things get a little technical. So I think we have a pretty decent idea of why people like initially choose to build for iOS. You really recently released an app. What was it called again? It's called panels. Panels. That's what it was. Panels. Why did you choose to hit them both at the same time instead of doing one and then double back and do the other? For us, it was specifically because we know our audience is split.

pretty evenly. So we know lots of people use iPhone who watch us. We knew lots of people use Android who watch us and launching on one and not the other would feel like we're just missing part of our audience there. So we just wanted to do both. Okay. It would have been way easier to only do one. Way easier to just do one. Facts. Yes. We probably would have made some money off it too if we only did one. Yeah.

There are tools like React Native from Facebook or I guess Meta now, Kotlin Multiplatform from JetBrains and Flutter from Google. These are all open source things that will allow you to do just that, to write code once and then export for Apple, iOS and even web, kind of. I mean, I'm sure it's a little bit more difficult than that, but that's pretty much the gist of it. So keep that in mind for this part of the conversation. I have three...

three two three three theories as to why this is the case okay all right one your app takes off but it still demands a lot of your time and money apollo for reddit falls under this category i asked christian when we were talking you know reddit is just like a website and apollo was like taking the information from that website and displaying it why not make a web app as well like this could have just been like another website you know he could have had the app and a website but

Why not both? For one thing, like with a web app, you're kind of targeting like the lowest common denominator. Like it's a very, not necessarily in a negative way, but it's a very non-tailored experience. And a big thing with Apollo that people were excited about was like, this is not a cross-platform app. It's an app that feels like an iOS app. Like if you're familiar at all with iOS and you like the technology, you're going to like it.

this is going to feel tailored toward your device. And that resonated with a lot of people. Whereas I think just being like, this is like every other web app you navigate to is less of like, oh, I feel special using this. But then I spoke with Curtis who did exactly what I wish more developers would do, which is he launched an iOS app called Slopes

It was pretty successful. He was able to like make it his main thing. And then a couple of years later, he was like, you know, there's this whole other market of Android developers or Android developers, Android users that I should try to hit. And he went back and hired an Android developer. I mean, it was a challenge finding a great Android engineer that could kind of take the lead on that. One that I mean, at that point, so Slopes is 100% bootstrapped. We've never taken VC money. This has just been growing.

over time. So we couldn't throw San Francisco money out there. So finding a good engineer that could be a senior engineer, hands-off, and could kind of take the lead on cloning the iOS app.

Context. I'm a longtime Apple user, love the platform. We did it on iOS native. And I wanted to make sure that when we did Android, we showed similar respect to those users. So we are Kotlin, we are material design, there was no cross platform here.

And there was a slew of contractors out there that could help us launch a React app or something like that. But battery life is kind of important when you're skiing. You need to make sure the app actually runs all day. And React isn't the easiest on battery life. So we want to make sure that, you know, we did right by the platform, just like we're trying to do for iOS. And so finding an engineer that kind of checked all those boxes was a challenge.

And then cloning the iOS app was a lot of work. So we had to rewrite everything. But it was a challenge. It took...

well over a year to really get there. - And even that took a year to build with like some guy that he hired who knew exactly what he was doing. Can't relate. The second category is you are successful enough that you think you can build your own Android app, but it's just not as fulfilling or worse. It's just more difficult than you expected.

I think that's way more important than people give credit to. The developer experience. The developer. I mean, like Christian's making that because he is an iOS user and it was fun for him. And the reason the app is probably so successful is because he had a good time building that app. Like think about what Marquez says to people aspiring to be YouTubers for ever. He's always said this is like, if you have fun making the videos and genuinely enjoying making them better, the viewers are something that might come in. But like,

you never have to worry about your view count if you just enjoy making it. So like if he enjoyed making Apollo and then went to go make it on Android and didn't have a good time, it's probably going to be a garbage app and then just stressful all of the time. Yeah, that's fair. And it's like, what are your goals with the app? Are your goals to reach the most number of people and have the largest audience possible? Then it might make sense to do an Android app. If your goal is to have fun, make a living and make the best app you can in this refined environment, maybe then it's just one platform. Yeah.

Like it really does depend on how also you kind of see yourself. I feel like earlier when we were talking about which YouTubers kind of represent which, that's like a very particular aesthetic that I think people like align themselves with. So if you see yourself as one kind of person, you're going to be drawn towards that device and that operating system and that aesthetic. And then that's who you're going to be developing for, you know?

But it also works in reverse, oddly enough, because Karn made an Android app and then it was pretty successful. And he was like, you know what? I'm going to bring this over to iOS. And he tried doing that and just completely lost passion for it because it's like it's not how he interacts with the technology. Like, you know what I always think about? And no shade to Vimeo, but Vimeo still exists. I'll throw the shade at Vimeo. I've followed Vimeo over the years. Vimeo only still exists because...

When you had to put licensed music on like a cool highlight video you took it off. So you threw it on Vimeo instead That's literally start. Yeah, I have that here. So It's like I feel like YouTube for online video streaming is the dominant winner, you know, like that is in my eyes I I don't even know would that be Android iOS Vimeo YouTube YouTube would be I guess both because it was short form or long form. I

MARK MANDEL: Long form, it's iOS. MARK MANDEL: OK, interesting.

I just feel like it's been such the dominant winner, but like whenever I find a random, I don't know, documentary maker or something and I go to see their reel, it's always on Vimeo or like a random brand thing is always on Vimeo. I never like click in and see their like YouTube channel unless they're YouTubers trying to be YouTubers. So like, I feel like that professional reel aesthetic or YouTuber kind of like I create videos to be creative aesthetic are like the two things that drive people to those two platforms.

what would make you want to upload to Vimeo? Nothing. Today? Yeah. Right now, Vimeo has an announcement and you're like, hmm, I should do that. It would be something where I specifically don't want to put it on YouTube. It would have to be really specific. Because that's kind of how I'm thinking iOS developers feel. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I don't know. Maybe Vimeo doesn't have as many upsides as the comparison. But we keep saying fragmentation, but...

this being like both an upside and an Achilles heel, it's really choice. Like on Android, you have choice. You can get a $1,300 flagship with the most incredible specs and cameras and screens. You can get a $150 phone that does these things that you like or anywhere in between. And there's a phone at every single price point with every single set of features and you have that incredible choice. That's the upside.

The downside is those phones and those companies are all managed very differently and are all updating at different rates and are all scaled differently in different resolutions, different OS numbers. And on the other side of the fence, there's the iPhone, which has, what, four models, five models right now? Something like that. And...

Way less choice, but way more locked in as far as behind the scenes development, the ability to update them all at once, that sort of thing. So it's the Achilles heel of Android, but it is kind of why we love it. So let's say you're building an Android app. Unless you start the project with the idea in mind that you're going to go both to Android and to iOS, doing a complete rebuild of that app in a different language can be like an insane amount of work.

I kind of thought of it like, because they kept telling me this and I didn't really like click it together. And I was like, I don't see it. Like, I don't know why it would be that much more work. And then I thought of like, okay, what if I wanted to reproduce this podcast for Vimeo and for YouTube? Like that would be an insane amount of work. We'd have to rerecord everything twice, which we've done before. But it's not fun. Let's not do ROI is not as high. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

I feel like doing that is, have you ever played prestige mode in Call of Duty? No. Where you just like, you get all the way to your highest level, you unlock everything and then you start literally from zero just so you can get like a new icon on the end of your level, but you have to unlock all the guns again and everything. Oh my God. That's kind of what it sounds like. You're like, I built my app. Now I'm going to do it again. When I played Call of Duty, it was 55.

I got to 55. I have every gun unlocked. Yeah. I'm going to start over just so the next time I buy 55, there's like two stars next to it. Oh my God. That's crazy. There's no, the benefit that is you have two apps, I guess, but like those first few levels are brutal.

So yeah, it turns out if you don't start out building your app with the intention of going to both platforms, doing an entire rebuild is pretty expensive and really difficult. Even a company as big as Notion had to really think about whether or not they wanted to invest the time and resources to rebuilding their app from scratch basically, in order to make parts of it native. Not even all of it, parts of it. One thing I forget,

who it was maybe it was when I was doing my research but something that someone brought up that I found really interesting was you also don't know if it's going to work when you do this like you don't know if it's going to succeed just because you like invested in an Android engineer to like come and do this thing just because you popped off on Instagram doesn't mean it's going to work on YouTube facts you know yeah so it always comes back to like

Why play with fire? Like if you play it safe and you just stay with the platform you're already on, you can just like keep winning in your way. And I think that like that block is what's causing a lot of iOS apps to not make its way over to Android. People are like, it's fine here. Like I'm doing good. I don't need to go over there. You could think of

the audio podcast when it launched where we started from the beginning. We made an audio podcast. We had a very small amount of things we had to hit because it was only our voices. Yeah. And then we had to relaunch the video podcast at some point which now, you know, it might not even work as a video podcast. There's so many more variables onto like what is on the screen, what our set is, what our lighting is, how many people. The employees, you had to hire me and Ellis. We literally like had to hire more people to do it. It's,

It was successful. Yeah. And the audio stuff is still doing great. But like the audio was very simple. They get it at 4 a.m. still every day. The video, we had to change launch times because there's so many more things have changed a lot. This is...

People actually watch this? We're on camera? I should start brushing my hair. I thought this was just for funsies. Wait, you guys get paid? So the third category of you have an iOS app and you're trying to dabble in the Android side of things, if your app is successful, you will need Android engineers, which is something that Karin said, and I found that super compelling. Because if you think about the giant apps, Facebook, Instagram, Notion,

They all have both, especially because the goals are different because they need to reach as many people as possible. And if you're leaving one out, you're messing it up. So you have to invest in both. Yeah. And being everywhere. I think a lot of the really cool Android only apps are the ones. Name one. Well, I can't name them. Yeah.

But I would imagine that they're the ones that let you do things that Apple doesn't let you have access to. Like all of the battery optimizer. Nova launcher, stuff like that. I don't know what that is. Oh, that's the salmon cannon at the national parks. Nova launcher. Get it? Get it? Worst puns. Get it? You know what I mean? Like the battery optimizer sort of ones are like,

The ones that give you access to the sound card to put like really advanced EQs across like the entire headphone. Yeah. I was about to say headphone jack. The audio spectrum. Yeah. But you know what I mean? Like. Yeah. Those kind of like apps that they become popular because they can only be on Android. It's less so that they are good popular apps. Not that they're not because Nova Launcher is like my favorite thing. I just downloaded it yesterday. What is Nova Launcher? Nova Launcher is. Yeah.

Damn, you sound like such an iPhone user. It lets you change the themes and how things work. You can completely change your home screen, your home screen layout, how things behave. App drawers and all sorts of different things. The settings and the real deep phone things are the same. That depends manufacturer to manufacturer. But the aesthetic of it, you can completely customize. So one of the main reasons I wanted to talk...

to all these developers in this episode specifically is because there are technologies you can use that will just automatically post to both.

And I say automatically, it's not automatic. You do have to do some work, but you don't have to like rewrite the whole code base. Like there's this thing, React Native. It's open source made by Facebook or I guess Meta now. There's Flutter, which is by Google. And the whole benefit, the whole point of this is you can write your code in like JavaScript, just like a regular language. And then you hit like basically export and it pops out to Apple devices.

Or two apps, one for Apple, one for Android. I imagine that this works about as well as Google Translate. You know what I mean? It'll get the gist. It'll get probably the function of the sentence you're trying to say, but it probably won't be grammatically perfect. Is this not what Panels is in? I think Panels is Kotlin multi-platform. Okay. I think. And then edit it after the translation. I just don't want to.

MARK MANDEL: Yeah. So the translation, it's like if you just hit Translate and then just go, this is it, then you'll have a not that great app. But we've translated and then developed both independently after the translation. So we didn't build it from scratch for both. But yeah, that's the difference.

So Curtis had a really interesting analogy that kind of blew my mind. The way I look at it is those tools are great in some situations. The best way I usually explain it to non-developers, but have like maybe some sense of at least the internet, is like WordPress is a great platform, but you don't want to build every website on WordPress. For some people, it makes a ton of sense. A restaurant...

You don't need a custom website backend with all these things. WordPress is going to be great. But when you're trying to build some backend web application that people are going to log into and do all these things on, you're going to start tailoring limits of WordPress and what it can do. And React is very much the same way. It's going to be great for a lot of apps that are out there, but there's going to be a lot of apps out there that it just doesn't make sense for. And especially as you get

more and more deeply connected to the hardware, or you're trying to do more and more custom things, you're going to be hitting the limits of, you're going to be hacking around React almost as much work as it's going to be to just write it native at that point. Yeah, so it's a good technology. It has its use cases, but like every technology, it has its trade-offs.

But I found it really interesting because for me, that kind of solves the problem. Like unless you have a very specific use case, why wouldn't you use both of these, right? Like you can just...

published to everyone instead of needing to hire two completely different teams of people and do all this thing. But apparently that does come with some drawbacks. So Christian, for example, was saying that you get a total win in that you have an experience on both platforms, which something existing on Android or something existing on iOS when it wouldn't otherwise is infinitely better than nothing.

But the experience on each is not as great as it could have been if you developed it wholly natively. Like PixelPals, for instance, where you mentioned that was like Apple announced a new iPhone. I was like, oh, I can kind of mess with the status bar APIs and get all that in.

Whereas I don't even know if React Native has the proper mappings on day one to access all the status bar and dynamic island stuff. Whereas Apple obviously does. So I can hit the ground running, go really quick, build a really cool native experience around that. And the same is basically true with Android. The question of why not just use something like React Native or Flutter is an important question. And I think what it boils down to is your needs. What is your use case?

So for like a simple application, you might want to do something like React Native or Flutter because you're just doing like what is effectively like reading and writing like small, making small edits. You can think of like a reservation app, for example, for your like local barber or whatever. And these apps lend themselves well to being like

things that you can sort of deploy in these cross-platform ways, that is a real consequence of using these types of technologies, these cross-platform technologies, is that they sort of abstract away some of the low-level APIs that you have. And because there's a layer on top of it, you lose out on some of the performance.

So even at like Notion, for example, one of the things that we do is we make these trade-offs between like, what is the right thing to, to, to turn native and what is the right thing to keep in? Like, uh, we use like web views in the background, but, um, like other apps might do like Flutter or whatever, but, or like React Native. So like you might want to like, depending on what your use cases are and like whether you need the performance, um,

Those are the kinds of like trade-offs you'd make for going native versus going to one of these cross-platform things. I still wasn't personally super convinced after this. I was like, okay, sure, whatever. That seems like a fair trade for me to have like my app everywhere. And then Christian told me a crazy story, which was when he was building Apollo, he was trying to redo a certain like navigation movement. Like, you know, on all phones now, basically when you swipe from left to right, it like takes you back to like the main feed. Mm-hmm.

And he was doing that accidentally. And he was like, okay, well, to me, the solve is pretty simple. You just swipe from right to left. Like you do it in the opposite direction, jump back into the thing you were just doing. So I wanted to build that into Apollo. And it turns out you had to throw it like the entire navigation stack and rebuild it from scratch to implement it, go in the other direction. Um, because you,

anyway so but it was like oh my god the amount like i would i was taking like slow motion videos of like the iphone and how it like the animation curve and trying to mimic that because there would be like such little details of like where the page underneath would slowly slide into frame at a different rate than the one on top would move and like you have to have a super close attention to detail to mimic these things and if the person building like the react native library three years ago doesn't necessarily have that

attention to detail because they just want something that's cross-platform or worse ios 18.1 comes along and apple's like i'm gonna tweak that animation curve by 0.1 seconds

a native app would just adopt that automatically. It would just get it for free. React Native, you might have to go back and go, oh crap, if it's on iOS 18.3, tweak the animation curve a little. We'll have to go back and get the slow motion cameras again. It's this kind of like this race always to keep parity with something that's potentially always moving. And it definitely can create this uncanny valley. I tried really hard to get it. I would still get some like

0.1% of users who would be like, I can tell you're doing something here and I don't like it. Which sounds like a nightmare. Yeah. I could not imagine doing that. So all this led me to the conclusion that at least here in North America...

Android is cooked, right? That's pretty much what we're getting at. People use iPhone from an early age. Those people grow up to eventually be developers that will then develop for iPhone or purchase on the iPhone app store. And then using these cross-platform tools is basically frowned upon for most use cases. But Karin brought up a really interesting point that Android actually has a superpower in this AI boom that we're going through right now. - One of the things that I think is gonna be like super exciting in the near future, and I think where Android has a bit of a superpower

is in the integratedness of, or the connectedness of all the apps on your device. If you think about it, for a lot of people, as a developer, there's a privilege of having someone walk around with your app. Take it with them to go, or maybe a more modern example of this is like, what apps are on your home screen? That's a privilege, right? And everyone carries a lot of these apps on their phone, and as these devices become more and more connected,

There's a lot of need for cross communication between apps. And I think where the real opportunities and where I think like Android is a little bit ahead is how much apps can talk to each other. You can get to a state where you could potentially replace Google Assistant or Bixby or whatever you're running on your device. And will there ever be a Siri replacement?

or will we have to wait for Siri to catch up to whatever the most up-to-date or latest voice assistant is? And so iOS is a little bit slower on these things just because they own it end-to-end, whereas Google has a little bit more flexibility and they just expose the APIs and let developers run with it. So per

Perplexity, I think he mentioned, had this new assistant that he was super excited to try out. And he was like, you know, it's a cool new thing. I could just install it on my phone. And now I have the Perplexity Assistant. If that's the case for Apple, you have to wait for them to integrate it into Siri. And if the Apple intelligence rollout is any indication-- Yeah, that's a great point. Doesn't look like it's going to be a huge needle jumping movement anytime soon. Yeah, it's not going to change rapidly.

I keep coming back to this analogy of uploading content to different social media platforms. And it's like, if I were to recommend something right now, I think picking one platform and being native to it and being really good at it is a good idea. Mm-hmm.

And if you upload that exact same thing, let's say to from YouTube, you try to upload that to TikTok, like the overlays are in a different place and like the UI, you can't like point to the button the same way you did on YouTube. Like you have to make more native content for that OS. It's it's always going to be more work to do it in more places. Yeah. So that's not going to change anytime soon. But yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. The way it starts is just-- it's up to the developer. Yeah. I feel like there will continue to be iOS-only apps dominating the stores. Yeah. But I at least have hope that somewhere down the line, there will be some really cool Android-only things that is going to make it more appealing.

So between the AIs being able to do whatever they're about to be able to do in the next coming years, Google finally having a design language that like people are really getting behind and they're sticking with it and being consistent. So like the aesthetics of it is attracting a certain kind of person. I think there could be a future in where that becomes desirable to be in that kind of like playing field.

And then all they got to do is get the money right because then we're all good. If you can compete on Apple the same way. So to close out this Apple versus Android slugfest, I asked each of our new developer friends to pick a side to try to recruit you, the listener, to be a mobile developer either for Apple or for Android. Here's what they had to say. Oh, you're screwing me here. That, I mean, the political answer would be it would wholly depend on the app. I think...

If you're just a one-person team, if you can call it that, and you're looking to develop something, I would say iOS, if it's a very North American market that you're targeting, I would say iOS is definitely a solid bet. You're going to end up probably taking twice as long. It's going to be twice as difficult just in terms of keeping your chickens in line to develop for two platforms, whereas iOS will let you get to the majority of the market quicker,

and a more fruitful majority of the market. And at least let you see if this idea has legs. And then maybe if it does, like explore other options at that point. Like maybe you have an idea that you think would absolutely crush on Android and don't just, you know,

Throw away Android just because you have some preconceived notion. Like, look into it for sure. But I think for the get-go, it's a hard argument to make to not just explore your idea on iOS and see where that goes. But again, very biased. Building mobile apps is an experience of its own, I would say. I think...

I started building out games and then web stuff, but there was something very tangible about building something that showed up on your phone. And like I mentioned, that you have the privilege of caring with you in other places. When I first started building apps, one of the things I would do is I would just scroll around in my own apps, just see what the experience is and just obsess over some of the details. And

You get a lot of that with, you know, being a mobile engineer and, you know, whether it's like a night and day difference between being like a web engineer or being a backend engineer. I don't know. I think that you can leave that to individuals themselves and, you know, just like let them play around with it. But for me, I think like being able to just like, you know, have an experience like the Google Podcast app sort of like going away and then the next weekend being like, oh, like, let me just, I'm just going to build it out. I'm going to build it out and it's going to work.

And just having that is such a rewarding part of being a mobile engineer. And then you also get like, I mean, there's like other benefits of it, which is like, you don't have to like spin up your own infrastructure. Like your phone is your infrastructure. Like, you know, I don't have to have a backend for a lot of the stuff that I build. And that's like super easy. It's like, if you want to do like something that like periodically fetches some, some like price for like,

a trading card or like a video game or whatever, whatever, whatever it is. You can do that and just like have it run on your phone and carry your phone all the time with you and runs in the background. And that's like super fun. You can make games. You can, I mean, like just like it's endless, just like the stuff you can do. And then also just like phones are getting a lot more powerful now. And, you know, if I'm like not writing code, then I'm on my phone, right? Like you're scrolling, you're like, most of your experiences are on your phone, right?

And, you know, as much as there are, there's like space for like other types of like engineering. I mean, being a mobile engineer is like rewarding in its own own way. I'm going to throw you a wild card here. I would say, as it probably came obvious from us talking, like start with iOS. But I would definitely say give Android a shot. If you think your niche exists on Android and you can target that market,

I would say we need more apps trying to do right by Android users because Android users deserve great software too. Like that shouldn't be exclusive to Mac. And the Android platform is,

has gotten a lot better from a development standpoint than it was in the early days compared to iOS. So start with iOS, but I would say it gives Android a serious look. It doesn't have to be choosing a side necessarily. You'll have to pick one to dedicate your resources to at first. If that's your situation, pick iOS. Sorry, easier to iterate. But

When you get big enough, don't ignore Android. Test the waters. See if you can do something there. And realize that just like iOS, it's going to take some time to get traction. It's going to take some time to get users that respect your app. It's not going to be an overnight success. Just because you have a successful iOS app, it's going to take years on Android, just like iOS probably did for you. But I would try more to convince people to give it a shot than to pick a side.

And I can agree, because I will be back on Android eventually at some point, I'm sure. MARK MANDEL: Tomorrow. By the time this episode goes out. FRANCESC CAMPOY: By the time I edit this episode, I will have convinced myself to go back to Android. So thank you for joining me on this long journey of why there are so many iOS-only apps. Did we learn anything new? Who knows? It doesn't feel like it.

I don't think so. I mean, I'm sure you knew that iOS users spend more, so there's more of an incentive there. And fragmentation on Android isn't exactly a secret, but I hadn't actually considered that there are full-grown teenagers and adults who are developing apps right now whose first experience was on iPhone, so that makes complete sense why they would be drawn to building for that platform.

And personally, I completely underestimated how big a role design and overall aesthetic plays into all of this. But I have to say, I cannot stop thinking about what Karn said about Android having a superpower when it comes to this AI boom that we're having.

I'm really curious to see if there are any really compelling Android only apps just right around the corner. Though I guess if that ends up being the case then we'll just end up in the same problem but in reverse with people developing for Android instead of Apple and then we're back in square one. Anyway Marques wants to leave you with a pun. The grass is greener. On the Android side. Just saying. I was gonna go the opposite route. As an Android user? No.

I think the thing that stuck to me the most is that we don't understand how many of these developers are small indie developers. And I really liked what Christian said of if you're working on that one thing you think is great, once you have to make for the other side, you're taking time away. So like the great Ron Swanson once said, never half-ass two things, whole-ass one thing. Damn nice. Damn.

That's far. But as an Android user, that really screws me over. So maybe half-ass two things. Nice.