Pizzey & Knight

> PS I don’t know what “Android “is apart from in sci-fi movies. Im not > being silly, I genuinely don’t understand the differences. Fair enough. There’s now to summarize a big subject like this one without skipping something important or saying things that while approximately true aren’t complete. Even still, I can offer you a sketch that might help. Android and iOS are the two dominant operating systems out there for smart phones and tablets. For an end user, they’re more the same than different. Which one is better? Yes 😉 They have fans and detractors on both sides, such is how it goes. Both are geared towards small screens, conservation of battery life, and nearly instantaneous startup. If you know how to use one, you could easily figure out the other. Apps on Android and iOS often look and behave very nearly identically. They are both very different from desktop computers of whatever sort you might be using now. Instead of a mouse and keyboard and apps in different windows, you generally use one app at a time on a small screen using your fingers. Android is developed by Google and then more-or-less given away to phone makers to include on their handsets. The dominant Android smartphone maker is Samsung…but there are dozens of others. iOS is developed by Apple and used exclusively on their hardware: iPhone, iPod Touch (iPhone without a phone), and iPad. Apple and Samsung have been in a court battle for years that you may have seen in the headlines. It’s pretty much about Apple suing Google by proxy for cloning the iPhone. None of that matters much to us as users. You can buy a cheap Android phone at Woolies or Coles for $40-80 on sale but it probably won’t have the memory to run the Pizzey app…or most any serious birding app. Apple doesn’t make low-end devices but, in many markets, completely owns the high-end. (High end laptops? They own it. High end phones? They share it.) If you’re in the price range of Apple’s products, their kit is competitively priced with comparable gear. If you want something cheaper, they just don’t do that. I’ve got a couple of Android phones (love them), an old iPod Touch (works great, even years later), and the new iPad Mini. I have to say, the Mini is the greatest gadget in the history of gadgets, so far as I can tell. With a sturdy case, it can go in my bag and I’ve got thousands of pages of birding info, sounds and pictures from around the world. Magic. Oh, none of these devices are easy to read in bright light. So, books and pads of paper still have their place, to be sure. (I prefer paper guides for areas I don’t know as I flip through the pages a lot.) To buy apps for either platform, you go through a store. In the case of iOS, it’s Apple’s iTunes App Store. For Android, you’ve got choices. The biggest and most trusted is Google’s Play store. Many apps are free. When you buy an app, it’s usually licensed for one account on multiple devices. So, if you have a tablet and a phone you can often buy one copy of the app and legally use it on your two devices. With Apple, the license is always for 5 devices, so far as I know. For Android, it depends a bit. If you buy an Android version you don’t get a license for iOS or the other way around. Just like buying Office for Windows doesn’t let you run Office for Mac. Different OS, different license. And, yes, Microsoft does make a phone operating system and just finished buying Nokia something like yesterday. Windows Phone isn’t Windows, is getting increasingly positive reviews…and has a trivial market share for now. So, you don’t see so many apps for that. Colin R asked: “why is it cheaper for androids?” Probably because Android users are, as a market, far, far, far less inclined to spend money on apps. I assume that Guy Gibbons is attempting to get the best price he can for his efforts, and fair enough. Also, if the Android version is licensed for two devices and the iOS one for five…some people will find it cheaper on iOS. Birding apps as a category are some of the more expensive apps I’ve seen on either platform. _______________________________________________ Birding-Aus mailing list Birding-Aus@birding-aus.org To change settings or unsubscribe visit: http://birding-aus.org/mailman/listinfo/birding-aus_birding-aus.org