At Insite, we’re a happy group of designers, developers, techies, nerds, whatever-you’d-like-to-call-us. And as you might expect, a group such as this has a strong opinion about happenings in our industry.

Recently, Ryan (PC) and Jimmy (MAC) delighted us with a little debate on whether or not Android will surpass iPad in 2014.

It went like this…

On UI Consistency:

Jimmy: “Since Apple has full control over the software AND hardware, there’s less of a disconnect from the user’s perspective. Android, however, is different from one manufacturer to the next (ex. Samsung vs. Motorola).”

Ryan: “UI Consistency is both a benefit and a detriment to Android. There are large markets that don’t want the “standard” interface, and want something different. With iOS that’s not even an option. With Android, they’re just waiting for someone to have the foresight to do it.

On International / Language Support:

Jimmy: “My wife’s Korean parents can attest to this. They couldn’t find alternate Korean text options on the Droid market and when there was the option, it was extremely limited.”

Ryan: “The beauty of Android is if you want Korean language support, you can write it. It’s really that simple. It’ll have Swahili and Sanskrit support as soon as there’s a marketable interest in having it. The point being that there isn’t currently Korean support because no one has found it profitable to have it. I don’t know what the market numbers look like in Korea, but if a lot of Koreans start using android devices, you can be certain that Korean language support will become standard very quickly. Anyone can write it, distribute it, sell it, whatever, and they don’t need Google’s permission or approval. And if it’s any good, Google will buy it and incorporate it into future releases.”

On Battery Life:

Ryan ”This comes down to the apps. Battery life in a bare-bones iPad and a bare bones Android pad are pretty much the same. It’s the apps that burn the juice. Android is going through the same growing pains Windows went through in the late 80s and early 90s. People suddenly discovered that anyone could write desktop apps and a whole lot of terrible apps were written. There are a million apps to make cat sounds for Android that burn through your battery in a half-hour, but that doesn’t make those the benchmark for apps. Well written apps don’t burn battery life any faster on one platform over another.”

Jimmy: “Having Flash on android definitely helped Apple win this battle early on; even after taking a lot of flak for not supporting flash, Apple stuck with their decision. However, this argument is moot now that Adobe has announced discontinued support for mobile devices to focus on HTML 5. Apple knew early on how Flash could kill the battery life of mobile devices. They also knew floppy discs were coming to an end before everyone else.”

On App Stores:

Jimmy: “I think it’s a given that Apple has a pretty huge head start on this, so again, unless the Android market really takes some major leaps forward soon this could hurt in the long run.”

Ryan: “The app store will be the death of iOS in the end. To go back to the Windows in the late 80s example again: this battle’s already been fought and lost by Apple. Restricting development for your platform is a poor model. The platform that lets businesses easily and cheaply build their own apps for business purposes wins.

Last thoughts: 

We can argue all day long about what we think will happen in this ever-changing industry but, as Jimmy says, “it’s gonna boil down to the opinion/perception of the general consumer. We (as a company) shouldn’t rule out either, but instead keep embracing new technology as it emerges.”

I guess we’ll see in 2014. If the world is still here, we’ll thankfully have record of this conversation and maybe one of these guys will owe the other a drink. We’ll enjoy seeing that.