You can set your watch by it. Whenever a mobile application is announced that only runs on iPhones and iPads, invariably someone will come along to complain about the lack of an Android version. That someone will be perplexed if not outraged by this: Android, after all, has a significant market-share advantage, so why wouldn’t developers do an Android version at the same time, if not first?
And like clockwork come the replies: Android’s fragmentation means it’s more work to develop for multiple hardware profiles, screen resolutions, and OS versions; Android users are less likely to pay for software than Apple users and more likely to pirate it, and so forth. And then the discussion devolves into the usual tediousness of platform trench warfare, as each side works the facts to support their point of view and justify their choice of platform.
These arguments are tedious. They were tedious when it was Mac vs. PC. They’re tedious because they get lost in the weeds, because neckbeards love a geekfight, and because they miss the point.
The point is: your choice of platform has consequences.
I chose Mac OS X in 2001 over Windows. I did so because I was increasingly wary and tired of Microsoft (my last PC ran Windows Me, so you will understand) and wanted better security. I also did so in the full knowledge that I would be giving up access to a number of applications that only ran on Windows. I recognized that in order to gain the benefits of the Mac platform, I would have to give up some of the benefits of the Windows platform.
At the same time, someone who needed a particular Windows-only app would have been absolutely correct to stay on the Windows platform—but access to that app would have the consequence of having to deal with all of Windows’s crap at the time.
Mac users are used to having less software available; we’re used to making that tradeoff. If you’re complaining about something not being available on Android, it probably means you’ve never had to make this kind of tradeoff before, except maybe when choosing an Xbox meant you couldn’t get Zelda.
Now consider smartphones. Whether it’s Android, Blackberry, iOS or Windows Phone, each platform has its advantages and disadvantages. Whatever platform you pick, you gain something and you lose something. Android users get the advantages of an open, hackable platform (depending, of course, on your phone and cellular provider), handset selection and lower prices, but at the cost of fragmentation, less security, and developer reluctance to develop for your platform; iPhone users get ease of use, security and exceptional software selection, but have to accept the limitations of a locked-down system.
Neither of them are necessarily making the wrong choice, unless they’re picking the wrong phone for their needs. If you’re constantly complaining that all the good software is on the other platform, you may have hitched your wagon to the wrong platform. As I would have, had I spent my first year on the Mac bemoaning the lack of software that would have been available on Windows.
Or maybe you just want to have your cake and eat it too. It’s an understandable sentiment, if an immature one.