[PatNY]

Originally Posted by jbjb

Why are only consumer apps relevant?

Because most companies design and produce for consumers. Apple is not different here. If something is not practical for the bulk of its developers it has no practicality for consumers either.

There are exceptions to everything -- especially when you get into the realm of developers doing things on their own or for private apps.

We are not talking about exceptional cases. We are talking about normal everyday practice.

Apps tend not to give details like their use of springs and struts vs auto layout vs hand-scaled on their App Store pages, so it's not clear what sort of evidence would convince you.

Just name a widely used consumer app that was scalable prior to iOS6. OR reference an article that supports your claim that scalability was practical OR widely used prior to iOS6. What are you afraid of?

For some interfaces S&S are perfectly adequate (e.g. the app I referenced above). For some they aren't good enough and auto-layout is required. For yet others, individually crafted optimal UIs for each device type are worth the effort.

You are side-stepping the issue -- which is whether or not scalability was a practical alternative for the average iOS developer prior to iOS6. If it was not, then that supports my opinion Apple was hesitant to introduce new screen resolutions prior to iOS6 because then their developers would have to introduce new versions of their apps.

All those options are available to iOS developers.

Maybe now. But not prior to iOS6.

The big difference between iOS and Android is the pain involved in the last of those approaches. There are vastly more combinations of size, resolution and aspect ratio available for android, so covering each of those with a hand-crafted optimal layout is much more painful.

Yes, so painful that Android app development has grown faster than iOS development in the last few years!

The discussion was about your claim that Apple *is* (i.e. now) being held back by lack of UI scalability in iOS. I'd say the state of affairs for the last 2 major releases of the system is more relevant to that discussion than a release two generations out of date.

Up to iOS6 -- the BULK of the history of that platform -- what I said (and I wasn't the only one who said it, **cough cough**) is true. The fact that I did qualify my statement later to take into account changes after iOS6 is of minor importance. For the bulk of its history with iOS, Apple was hindered by poor or non-existent app scalability.

--Pat