Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Why Are There So Many iOS-Only Apps?

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

It's time for a bonus episode! In this one, Adam tries to figure out why there are so many apps that are exclusive to iOS. He brings in Marques, Andrew, and Ellis to talk about some of the reasons he found by talking with developers. Special thanks to Christian Selig, Karn Saheb, and Curtis Herbert for lending their expertise! P.S - We're headed to Austin! If you're going to be at SXSW in March we'll be doing a live show so come say hi! Links: Christian Selig:  - Website: https://christianselig.com/  - Threads: https://www.threads.net/@christianselig - Pixel Pals: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pixel-pals-widget-pet-game/id6443919232 Karn Saheb: - Website: https://karn.io/ - Threads: https://www.threads.net/@karnsaheb - Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/karn.io Curtis Herbert:  - Website: https://curtisherbert.com/ - Slopes app: https://linktr.ee/getslopes - Threads: https://www.threads.net/@parrots01 Music provided by Epidemic Sound  Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Socials: Waveform: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David Imel: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's cloaked.com slash vox, and check out with code podcast to get 30% off a cloaked subscription. I think a lot of the really cool Android only apps are the ones that... Name one. Well, I can't name them. 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. I stole your seat. I took it. The drum, that was an accident. Alice 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, more 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, 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 think they do. I'm going to 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 Oh constantly. Yeah I mean one of the things we've talked about is to-do list apps and One of them will like float across my, 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, or? 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? First of all, it is called Silver Booth. There's also pink, gold, and white silver as different colors. Wow, unbelievable. It turns out if you just like combine colors, you get new colors. I had no one. I've never had an iPhone. I've literally never been an iPhone. 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 and so you're using your iPad mini as like a conduit for Google services. Yes, like 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 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 cannot be with the upgrade. 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 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 also, which is even funnier. 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, and the other one was a Kyocera Rise. Interesting, I remember Kyoc rise And I loved those phones So I said Kyocera, I don't know if I'm wrong. Are these what? Oh, I always said I mean, they're Android phones. Oh, okay You heard it here first just having Android does not make a phone 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 bugs me. 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, 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. That's- 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? You want to go first? I have an answer. Yeah. What's your answer? 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, 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, easily getting it on an iPad. It might not be the most beautiful iPad app, five, six, seven year old, 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 wanna maximize my ROI, make an iPhone version of the app and that's your easiest way to reach the most people. 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 US, 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, too long. Yeah, two years ago, he also made the Juno app for AppleVision Pro, which is 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? iOS and Android. So we're checking all the boxes here. I wanted to 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, when I said it out loud, in my mind,

I could immediately hear all the people who know how to develop saying, 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.

Cause I don't know, you know, the time I made a website when I was like 14, it was like static and fit in like 800 by 600 web page. Yeah, like 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.

But I also think, and maybe you'll have more info on this, that Apple has maintained like the same scaling from iPhone to iPhone, like 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. We'll find out, because we are going to talk to everyone. Actually, Karan had a really good reason

why he thinks that Android has a superpower that in the future people might start leading that way, which I found really interesting. How's that for a hook? You're gonna have to stick around and find out. Is it AI related? Yes. 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, OK, 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 what I just thought of an equivalent for this? As a content creator,

if you think of different platforms the same way. 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 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 Yeah, I had anyway in this analogy. What is tick-tock? No, it's actually it's just like whatever Huawei phone,

like it's maybe gonna go away, but maybe like why keep working on it if it's gonna 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 wanna direct all that time. And for me, I've never found there

to be 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, like even back when I was developing Apollo, I was kind of of the mind. There was a lot of requests for the Android app, for instance. But I knew every week, every 10 hours I put into this potential Android app would be 10 hours potentially taken away from making the iPhone app

that much better. 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 fine item out 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 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, you know? 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 more 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 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? I was born. The Crunchwrap Superroom.

Well, the iPhone came out in 2007. The iPhone came out in 2007. I remember a time before iPhone. This is true. Not a lot of people do. No, I remember. Yeah, I remember. Yeah. Yeah. I remember.

Just saying I remember makes me feel so old. Back in my day. 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. 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 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, touchscreen on the front. I feel like we were mostly focused on touchscreens, less of the smart capabilities.

And then you'd flip it open like a hot dog, and then it would have a keyboard and a screen. I one time tripped off a sidewalk, fell face first, like running to go to the bathroom, opened my phone up, saw the front screen was completely shattered, went, few, 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. 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 my God. 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 like when you think of trends and the market and stuff like that It makes sense that people that 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 wanna do the thing that they already have. Like you wanna 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? Oh, nine.

Oh, nine? 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. Like I review what I can get my hands on. And I was doing all these Nexuses and all these other phones. And finally an iPhone was available that I could test. And I just got it.

And that was the beginning. That's crazy. You know, this just made me think of that, 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. Like back then it was hard to buy an iPhone and it still got to this point. Despite for years it actually being, like I had zero chance of getting one because I was on Verizon. And exclusivity for awhile. Yeah, why do you think it became so dominant? The iPhone?

Yeah. Have you ever used an iPhone? No. 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 multitouch the glass touchscreen all the stuff that made the iPhone the iPhone and 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. 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, 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?

I think 2007 the iPhone came out. I was 17. You were 17? Old. Yeah. Wow. Sorry. You lived a whole life before the iPhone.

Wait. Yeah. You were about to be able to vote, and then the iPhone came out. And then it took it away. 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. And then people will buy an iPhone and they'll 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, 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. And I had one friend who had an LG chocolate 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 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 that grind? But yeah, so iPhone was not in my budget, nice, okay. Honestly, back then. Yeah, that makes sense as an eighth grader.

Yeah. Yeah, so Christian had something to say about this. He said, Like iPhones globally are very much losing to Android, I think. Like it's, it's Android has definitely won that war globally, but in North America, like iPhones, I think especially among teenagers have like overwhelming

market share. Like it's, I think nearing like 90% of, and you have this market where like they dictate a lot of what goes viral and what, what matters and what makes money and what gets marketed. And when you have like a 90% market share of this group and even among adults, it's still very high in North America, iPhone versus Android. So you get these percentages where you're just looking at it and you're saying like I have 90% or somewhere in that realm of users on this one platform that makes more money. Is it worth me spending like absolute crap ton of time building this 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 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 Karn, 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, then 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. Like 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 like 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,

whatever, nine, $10 a month for Spotify. And, you know, and it's like, you know, that's just what it is. But I think it just like, it depends on what the need is. And I think most people's expectations and needs are different on Android. Did he compare which user is PlayStation, which user is Xbox?

He did not actually. That would send our comments off the fucking rails. I could continue the analogy with Instagram versus YouTube. 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 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? Who's who? I'm putting you on the spot. I mean, the obvious answer is that PlayStation is blue and it would be iOS and Microsoft is green and would be Android and I'm an Xbox liker. And what's your handle on threads and blue skies so people can yell at you?

Uh, I don't even remember. Version. Prior to the best. Nice. Yeah, so overall remember. Prior to the best. Nice. 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? There has to be another reason. We'll find out after the break. ["The Big Bang"]

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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 wanna do it and you wanna like make an app. There are like commercial successes, I would say, like Karn 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's not. 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. 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. It's an interesting trade off to make, but I think Apple is notorious for streamlining the experience and development experiences is no different. Although I would say that people have talked to you about Xcode, which is the iOS development environment, don't really like it. I've talked to about Xcode, which is the sort of like iOS development, like sort of environment. Like, you know, don't really like it.

And I've used it at like Notion or, you know, in like other places, just like as like passing through or like making small changes. And like my experiences on 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. 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, it was very tricky. Like the back when I last tried, there was like two different Android, uh, IDEs you could like choose, like text editors you could choose from.

And then from then like the, you know, there's like 17 million devices you could choose from to emulate it on. And the emulator was really slow. And it's like, there's this fragmentation that exists that is very intimidating. So yes, you have to 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 once you get over that hurdle and you're just in that ecosystem, coding for the iPhone is 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 like 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 what 20 devices or something like that like in total. 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 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 gonna 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, 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 that 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 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 features alongside iOS. And right away on Instagram, we get some Android users like, oh, well, there you go, not caring about Android again. And 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 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. 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 to finally,, 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, phones. It also applies to the design. Yeah, and they just care a little bit more about the, and this is not to say that Android engineers don't care about it, but maybe on average, I think folks who use iPhones are a little bit more, or develop for 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 it. Google is trying to get to that stage. Maybe a good example of this is Material 3. they're pushing really hard on like trying to get material three to be like sort of the common way that 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 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 in mind? I have two. Michael Reeves is Android. That is a great one.

Michael Reeves is definitely sure. That's why I love him so much. Although he probably, he probably uses iPhone though. I might use my phone. Totally, but his videos are Android. Yeah. His videos are Android.

Just pure chaos. Whistling Diesel is Android. Who's an iPhone? God, who is? Dave2D is an iPhone. Oh, sure, yeah. That's a good one. I can see that.

Clean, very aesthetic, that's fair. Maybe Unbox Therapy, very, very, the consistent aesthetic is important. I would argue, if you want us to do that, Unbox would be Android because it's like a, just do it live, like not as pure as aesthetics. Yeah, pure aesthetically, yeah. Yeah, but yeah, totally style-wise.

What about like Zach from JerryRigEverything? That feels, hmm, that feels more Android because of what he's doing in the video. So he's taking things apart, putting it back together. I also had him as an Android developer in my head. Totally. What about Ollier? That would be an iPhone. Yes also had him as an Android developer in my head. Totally. What about earlier? That would be an iPhone.

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. I think the main reason I do not use an iPhone

is because of the aesthetics. Really? I, and up until recently, they let you do it, but I like a very blank home screen. You could not do that on 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 only in the most recent update you can 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, cause 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. 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 lies with Apple. Like I think they're doing their own thing. And I definitely have respect for material. I feel like once we got to like 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 you anymore? Material you. I don't remember them saying that. I think that's just as like 14. Yeah, I don't think they've like announced 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? Nevermind, we're on this now.

And with Material, Material U, right? Android 12, by the way. Android 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 gonna start like the ball rolling down the hill

and keep the momentum moving, moving forward. So like. It'll change this year. Calling it, because you said that. Dude, if that happens, oh my God, I hope not. I like material you. Yeah. I do too.

Yeah. I'm gonna blame you if that happens. I'm gonna bring this up. Her she'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 U, 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 Christian, Christian was saying,

even if they nail the developer tooling ecosystem, which I don't think they have. Neither is 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 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, it's much more jagged and fragmented, which is a word that's been abused over the years. But 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, 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 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 might be it. Pixels, maybe. So yeah, you get that instant turnaround of hundreds of millions of people having the newest feature. And that was one of Christian's biggest points was that you get this positive feedback loop of like, I just worked on this thing for a month. The day it comes out on everyone's phones, 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 pixel 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 like dub on 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. ["Squid Game Theme Song"] Vox Media Podcasts are heading back to Austin

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Puffing up there, lady. That's healthcare. I feel like I'm the lone dissenter So I'm out I'm sure when they air this episode They'll be like Charles was really dumb for those who can't see my jaws currently on the floor season 13 of the pitch starts March 5th Episodes are available to watch on YouTube or listen on your podcast player of choice. So subscribe to the pitch right now on your podcast player of choice. So subscribe to the pitch right now. Okay, welcome back.

So I'm calling this section the Por que 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 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 initially choose to build for iOS. You 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 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.

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 with a web app, you're kind of targeting the lowest common denominator. 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 this is not a cross-platform app. It's an app that feels like an iOS app.

If you're familiar at all with iOS and you like the technology, 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 make it his main thing. And then a couple of years later, he was like, you know what? 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. So context, I'm a long time 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 Marques says to people aspiring to be YouTubers forever. 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 gonna 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. 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, YouTube took it off so you threw it on Vimeo instead. That's literally, yeah's how it started. 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 don't even know. Would that be Android or iOS?

Vimeo? YouTube. YouTube would be, I guess both, cause it was short form or long form. Long form, yeah, iOS. Okay, interesting. Yeah. Yeah, so 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 real 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, yeah.

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe Vimeo doesn't have as many upsides as the comparison. But we keep saying fragmentation, but this being 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? Some 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 gonna 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, cause 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 I- That's not fun. That's not different. The ROI is not as high.

Yeah. Exactly. I feel like doing that is, have you ever played prestige mode in Call of Duty? 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. That's kind of what it sounds like. You're like, I built my app. Now I'm gonna do it again. When I played Call of Duty, it was 55. I got to 55. I have every gun unlocked. I'm going to start over just so the next time I'm at 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 gonna work when you do this like you don't know if it's gonna succeed just because you like invested in an Android engineer to like come and do this thing. Just because you popped off on a scam doesn't mean it's gonna 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 Waveform, 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. 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. We literally like had to hire more people to do it. It was successful 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 variables. Things have changed a lot. Wait, this is, we had to change launch times because there's so many more, yeah, things have changed a lot. Wait, 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 like, you know, trying to dabble in the Android side of things.

If your app is successful, you will need Android engineers, which is something that Karen said. And I found that super compelling. Cause if you think about like 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, and being everywhere. I think a lot of the really cool Android-only apps

are the ones that- Name one. Well, I can't name them. But I would imagine that they're the ones that let you do things that Apple doesn't, that you have access to. Like all of the battery optimizer. Nova launcher, stuff like that.

I don't know what that is, but. Oh yeah, nova launchers. Oh, that's the Salmon Cannon at the national parks. The launch. Nova launcher. Oh my god. Get it, get it. That is the worst puns.

Get it. But you know what I mean, like the battery optimizer sort of ones are the ones that give you access to the sound card to put really advanced EQs across the entire headphone, I was supposed to say headphone jack. The audio spectrum. Yeah, but you know what I mean?

Yeah, those kind of 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... Damn, you sound like such an iPhone user.

It's it lets you like change the themes and like how things work. You can like completely change your home screen, your home screen layout, how things behave. App drawers and like all sorts of different things. The settings and the like 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 rewrite the whole code base. 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 JavaScript, just like a regular language, and then you hit basically export, and it pops out to Apple, or two apps, one for Apple, one for Android. I imagine that this works about as well as Google Translate.

Damn. You know what I mean? Yeah. 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. Yes. Is this not what Panels is in? I think Panels is Kotlin Multiplatform, I think.

And then edit it after the translation. 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.

Okay. 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 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 tailing 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 publish to everyone

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

to being things that you can 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 sort of 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 Notion, for example, one of the things that we do is we make these trade-offs between what is the right thing to turn native and what is the right thing to keep.

And we use web views in the background, but other apps might do Flutter or whatever, or React Native. So you might want to, depending on what your use cases are and whether you need the performance, 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. 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 out like the entire navigation stack and rebuild it from scratch

to implement it go in the other direction. Anyway, so but it was like, oh my god, the amount, like 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, IOC team point one comes along and Apple's like, I'm going to tweak that animation curve by point.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 race always to keep parity with something that's potentially always moving. And it definitely can create like this uncanny valley. Like I tried really hard to get it. I would still get like 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 going to be like super exciting in the going near future, and I think where Android has a bit of a superpower, is in like the integratedness of,

or like the connectedness of all the apps on your device. If you think about it, for a lot of people, you know, as a developer, there's a privilege of having someone walk around with your app, like take it with them to go or, or yeah maybe a more modern example of this is like what apps are on your home screen? That's a privilege right? And you know everyone carries a lot of these apps on their phone and as as these devices become more and more connected there's a lot of like like need for for cross communication between apps. And I think where the real opportunity is, and where I think Android is a little bit ahead,

is how much apps can talk to each other. You can get to a state where you can 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 Perplexity, I think he mentioned had like 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 like install it on my phone. And I have the perplexity 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 indication. Yeah, that's a great point.

Doesn't look like it's gonna be a huge, you know, needle jumping movement anytime soon. Yeah, it's not gonna 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.

And if you upload that exact same thing, let's say 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 always gonna be more work to do it in more places. So that's not gonna change anytime soon.

But yeah, the way it starts is just, it's up to the developer. I feel like there will continue to be iOS only apps dominating the stores. But I at least have hope that somewhere down the line there will be some really cool Android only things that is gonna 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 people are really getting behind and they're sticking with it and being consistent, so 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 playing field. And then all they gotta 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. Um, that, I mean, the political answer would be, it would wholly depend on the app. I think, whew, if you're just like a one person team,

if you can call it that, and you're looking to develop something, I would say like 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, explore other options at that point. Like maybe you have an idea that you think would absolutely crush on Android and don't just 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, you know, I started building out games and then did like web stuff, but there was something very tangible building something that showed up on your phone. And, you know, 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 like scroll around in my own apps, just, you know, just like see what the

experience is and just like, like obsess over some of the details. And you get a lot of that with being a mobile engineer. And whether it's a night and day difference between being a web engineer or being a backend engineer, I don't know. You can leave that to individuals themselves and just let them play around with it. But for me, I think being able to just have an experience

like the Google Podcasts app going away, and then the next weekend being like, oh, I'm experience like Google, 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 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 run on your phone. You can carry your phone all the time with you, it runs in the background, and that's super fun. You can make games, I mean, it's endless, just the stuff you can do. And then also just phones are getting a lot more powerful now. And if I'm not writing code, then I'm on my phone, right?

You're scrolling, most of your experiences are on your phone. And as much as there's, 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 gonna 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 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.

Pick iOS, sorry, easier to iterate. But when you get big enough, don't ignore Android. Like test the waters, see if you can do something there. And realize 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. By the time this episode goes out. 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. This episode goes out. 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? 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 had it actually considered that there are full 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. Ah, ah. 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 hard. That's hard, yeah. But as an Android user, that really screws me over. So maybe half-ass two things.

Nice. Wave from a Spruce by Adam Malina and Ellis Rubin. We're partnered with Box Media Podcast Network and our intro to our music was created by Vein Sill.