> Current Hardware (Droid & Nexus One) is fast and responsive, no doubt about that.

I have a variety of current generation smart phones sat on my desk. I can assure you Android is still the least responsive OS :)

My personal choice is an iPhone and I dont agree. :)

> Last time i checked finding iPhone dev information was rather hard due to NDA stuff

Just as a point I think max was talking about getting in touch with developers at Apple, Google and Microsoft. Not just getting in touch with other developers on the platforms. (Google are people notoriously hard to get hold of at times :D So I am guessing that's what he means). Though I make no comment on if he is right or not.

Then you probably have another smartphone then i have. Just yesterday i was meeting friends (4xiPhones, 1xMilestone/Droid, 1xNexusOne) and the good nerds we were, people wanted to check out the newer Android phones. The 4 iPhone guys agreed it's on par.

You probably notice responsiveness differences beyond the level a normal person recognizes :p In fact, when you say you have a variety of smartphones on your desk, i guess you are working on a daily base with different handsets and have a very keen sense for this. And as i don't have numbers to back my statement up i'd say it's a difference in those handsets 95% of users wouldn't recognize. ;)

Well I work with them in the sense they are test beds for our phone forensics work.

But in fairness I have used pretty much all of them for extended periods as my work or social phone. Still going with the iPhone as the cleanest user experience :)

(but I realize opinions differ widely)

We know the N1 is not an iPhone. It is a very good phone for people who don't want iPhones, though.

Maybe people really only care about superficial looks, but then I don't know why all mobile phone makers except Apple just close shop.

I personally prefer the design of the N1, but that might be the geek in me. I get a sort of "eeew" feeling from most Apple products that is hard to explain, because it is too much design for me. Comparable maybe to seeing a prostitute in latex trousers and everything - yes, it looks good, but I still don't want it. But that is just my taste. The masses will decide, and the spare change in their pockets, too.

Actually I quite like (possibly even prefer) the Android design.

My issues have always been with:

- responsiveness (even the latest Android phones aren't speedy enough for me)

- phone - in my mind the iPhone is by far the best pure phone (and text message/email/web browser). There are little innovations and usability tweaks that make it my favourite phone.

seeing a prostitute in latex trousers and everything - yes, it looks good

Sounds horrid to me :s

All that support stuff is great for hobbyists, but completely unacceptable for businesses. With Apple and Microsoft you get incident support. If something comes up, you email them your project, they dig into the source, and they tell you what's going on at the code level. The iPhone Developer Program gives you two code-level incident supports, and the ones after that are absurdly cheap. Microsoft also gives you a phone option.

This is how real business support works, not forums and mailing lists. The latter is cool, but you also need the latter to have a serious platform.

I appreciate the benefits of incident support.... but tbh i've never hit a use case where i've needed it. Most issues you can work through yourself and if there is a serious fundamental flaw in the base code you can always find people in the right places to report it to.

With my experience with working with Windows Mobile: EXPECT NO SUPPORT. Most of the problems are due to the OEMs and some of the major ones I worked with (Symbol, Intermec, Datalogic) had support that was hilariously bad / non existent.

Of course you need apple and ms internal developers to dig into their source code, because you as a developer can't.

On the other hand, i can debug through every aspect of my android program right into the whole framework and see what is happening. Yay, open source.

Yeah, we have all heard the stories about the great support iPhone developers get, if their app is rejected for the app store.

If that is professional business, I prefer to stay independent. Actually, all the pain just might be a deliberate barrier to entry for "small fish". Companies are used to dealing with pain, individuals less so.

As a professional iPhone developer with a multiple top ranking apps, that shit just doesn't really happen anymore. You're much more likely to get a call from Apple with suggestions on what to edit.

The horror stories are from 6-9 months ago, and are outdated. So, while folks trot them out in threads like this as examples of how terrible iPhone development is, actual iPhone developers know that it doesn't really come up.

Our last two updates were accepted within 24 hours, for instance. Our last new application took three submits, due to issues on our end- every email from them was helpful, and actually IMPROVED the final application. Turnaround was 48 hours, and, on the last submission, they expedited to same-day when I asked them to.

I have an app (nowhere near top ranking tho) and I agree with you for the most part. My first submission took 2 days and any updates have taken less than 24 hours. One took less than 6 hours for them to turn it around and get it on the app store.

My only issue with the app store now is the returns. I have had 1 return and all I got from Apple was the form letter that if you have a lot of returns it might be a quality issue. What I would like to see is at least the questionnaire the customer fills out in order for Apple to grant the return. At least this way I can know if it's some sort of serious problem or just someone who made a purchase by mistake.