The debate of Apple vs Android is something that can not be definitely settled, given the sheer fanatic fan-following on both sides. However, there are certain ways of gauging which of them is a better, objective choice for a common user. According to a rather detailed article by PC magazine, iPad still fares as the best tablet for users because when it comes to Android, Android apps are still not good enough in a lot of ways.
One of the main problem with Android, as has been detailed in the PC Magazine article, is that a number of Android apps are not inherently scaled for tablets. They are originally built for smaller screens and when they are scaled to the display of a tablet, they don’t look really good.
The reason why many Android apps developers take this course is that Google has enabled built-in resolution independence on the platform. So rather than actually adding supporting for higher-resolution displays, the developer use this build-in feature and let things be. The result is that an app, which is originally for a smartphone, scales very poorly on a tablet.
Google’s built in support for multiple resolutions for Android apps is a huge advantage to Android app developers but not when it is utilized to take the easy way out.
App developers for iPad apps have tackled this problem because they have been forced by Apple, in a way, to create iPad-specific versions of apps and not simply scale app for a smaller device on the iPad. So, you will see a lot of apps specifically for iPad but very few of these apps have an Android-tablets-specific version. Naturally, the result is that these apps scale beautifully on an iPad but when you try using their Android version on an Android tablet, it is not at all a good experience.
This is not the case throughout, of course, and there are some excellent Android apps which scale neatly on an Android tablet. But then, the ratio of such apps to those offered by Apple’s store for iPad is huge and Google still has a lot of catching up to do.
Image courtesy oliver.
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