Does the Android App Store have different standards than the iOS App Store?

Text boxes wont hack it in today’s 3-D action. Android has people with ten fingers and ten toes, they are not much different from Apple.

Ok. I thought maybe he knew some thing I didn’t about the market. The game looks really craptasic right now. If it wasn’t the app that a friend of mine made, I would have uninstalled it as soon as it opened.

I thought maybe it was a wilder frontier.

It’s my understanding that the approval process between the two stores is completely different in every way. It may take a couple of hours to get an app approved in the Google Play store, while it can be a week or more for an iOS app, and the standards are very different. Remember, Apple has a whole team of people that test these apps and will reject them if they don’t meet certain criteria – including the quality/size of the app’s icon. As long as your app runs and doesn’t contain any (apparent) malware, the Google Play store process should go smoothly.

I’m just moving into mobile development right now. I’m inheriting an app my company has in the iOS app store, and I have been told that the approval process is brutal and long. We’re also working on an app that will be Android-only, as well as an app that will be released at the same time on both Android and iOS. We have experienced people in my company working on building up a whole set of services that we can use to provide test data just to get app approval for the iOS version. I’ll know more soon.

Ahh this explains much. I have another friend who has a drawing app that looks freaking awesome on iOS (he needed my device ID to send it to me) but he’s nowhere near releasing it to Apple. I mean it looks really polished to me.

It seems that Android DOES have a lower quality threshhold than Apple. I wonder if I can just beg him not to put it out.

Also, with Android apps you don’t need an app store at all. He can email you the app if he wants. There are also other app stores (Amazon’s Android app store, for example). It’s much more open, which is a great thing for many of us users and developers. But it means that we must tolerate a bit of the stuff that your friend is about to release. There are so many apps, however, it’s unlikely that your friend will make a splash with this app without any buzz. And if it’s as bad as it sounds, that is unlikely to happen.

Yeah, thats how I got his app in the first place. He emailed it to me. When I got the iOS app from a friend of mine, he needed my device ID to send it to me and it was kind of a pain.

I think your friend is about to make a massive financial mistake. If the core of your friend’s app is genuinely good, but very unpolished, then it would be very unwise to release it and improve it over time. Most apps generate their revenue in the huge spike that follows it’s release followed by a decline in purchases over time. If he never generates buzz around his app then it’s certain to be a flop.

It’s possible to improve your app over time, but the trick is, you start with the smallest feature set possible and polish it like crazy. Then add polished features over time. Unleashing a horrible app and expecting to improve it’s rough spots over time is a recipe for horrible reviews.

If however there really isn’t a golden nugget of awesomeness at it’s core, then he’s better off releasing early, failing and moving on quickly. There is too much competition for mediocre apps to succeed.

I have no idea if the app is genuinely good or not. I just know that as a consumer, I’d be totally turned off by what he’s got now and I’d not recommend it to anyone. But I’m just a user. I have no idea if the code is any good or the premise is marketable. I just see an ugly, clunky game that I can’t imagine anyone wanting to play.

@keobooks Being “just a user” is actually incredibly valuable. The code being good or not is irrelevant. If you could picture playing the game with a smooth and polished experience would you find it fun? addicting? Is there something unique there that would set it apart from everything else?

If the answer to all of this is no, then he’s probably better off failing quickly than failing slowly.

It’s a game that I really WANT to work out because it’s based off a game that I love to play and would like it to reach a wider audience. It’s an excellent strategy game.

Unfortunately, the game won’t work unless you have at least 3–6 people playing at the same time. It’s not a play alone game. Unless you have a reasonably large playerbase. the game will fall flat because there won’t be a game with no one to play with. I think a game like this needs to be extremely polished and have a lot of marketing and advertising (even if it’s just word of mouth advertising) to make it work.

I think it’s going to flop big time. Its such a shame because the game that it’s based off is very good.

This is a huge mistakes. Even if it gets polished later the reviews will be horrible by the time he fixes it. And by then it is too late.

Yes, they have different standards.

Apple is pretty uptight, into censorship, loves their “walled garden”, and every element of the UI has to be polished, even if the back-end is utter crap. Everything must look good, and align with Apple’s ideology.

Android, on the other hand, will accept “unfinished” software. See, Android is a bit like Linux in more ways than just sharing a kernel. Linux and Android are where people who like tinkering hang out. It’s where you can find something that’s still alpha/beta and, get this, actually have the developer(s) listen to your feedback!. They also have a lot more free software, a side-effect of people who program for reasons other than trying to turn a fast profit. Yes, there really are people who program for reasons other than financial gain! Basically, anything that isn’t malware, hate speech or outright porn is allowed in the Google Play market, and Android also allows third-parties to install apps without you needing to jailbreak your device to escape the walled garden.

That said, despite being more permissible than the “black tie required” Apple ecosystem, alpha-ware still isn’t generally well-received. Three are too many people who do not understand the whole development process and will expect alphaware to be a finished product, even though that is like expecting a fetus to have adult wisdom and knowledge. That may work for a single-player game, but has no chance as a multiplayer.

The dev changed his mind and is only releasing it on his website so everyone interested enough to read the progress on the game can play, but not random people—whew!