Apple VS Samsung, What our developer thought

[caption id="attachment_3229" align="alignnone" width="540"] Image from Applegazette[/caption] The following is my thoughts about this matter as a developer. The impact of this lawsuit can only mean good things instead of bad things for developers. First of all, this has nothing to do with Android. Google have been for years trying to tweak Android to avoid all the Apple patents as much as possible. More details can be found here : http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/25/3268609/how-google-has-avoided-apples-patents-trade-dress-other-claims Basically the issue here is OEM customization that Samsung place on Android to differentiate their devices from the other OEMs, which is Touchwiz. For Android developers, this is not good. Because of OEM customization, different Android phones from different manufacturer will carry a different experience. The reason Samsung lost is because they tried to put too much of iOS elements into Android. Samsung's lost might make them install Vanilla Android with no Touchwiz, therefore ensuring that the app experience on the phone is as intended by the developer. As you know, Touchwiz and HTC sense is also quite heavy on the phone's resources, all these will affect app performance on the phone. [caption id="attachment_3230" align="alignnone" width="540"] Samsung Galaxy S with Touchwiz[/caption] Also, due to Apple's patents on things like slide to unlock, double tap zoom, two finger zoom, rubberbanding. All these will greatly enhance the apps on iPhone, because all these effects will now be solely only on the iOS platform. These effects are subtle, but used frequently it becomes emotionally. Nowadays apps that do not feature rubberbanding at the end, or pull to refresh is deemed as bad. This can only mean iOS apps in the future will have the appeal and privilege of these gestures in the app, customers will be expecting apps to carry better visuals, quality and usability because iPhone will always be heralded as the standard for better UI design and usability. This will also bring benefits to Android, as developers will now have to redesign their apps to suit the Android's new theme, known as Holo. No longer will developers be able to slack and port over existing app design from the iOS counter part, as many of the iOS UI elements and effects will be absent from Android, as Google pushes developer to adapt to their new theme. Android and iOS apps will carry a distinctly different look by the next year, and these will be helped by Apple's lawsuit which is mainly based on their patented look and feel trademark. [caption id="attachment_3231" align="alignnone" width="360"] iPhone 3G[/caption] As developers, we will now have to do double work to support two platforms, but the outcome will have better results, which will increase customer satisfaction. Knowing this fact, Google will be improving their SDK to ease the developer's workload and make their tools less time consuming to work with. As for Apple, they will be bringing more advanced features in shorter times into the iOS SDK to stay on top in this competitive market.