Tapatalk operation suspended

[Admin]

Folks, for the few of you using Tapatalk -- especially now that we've made a practical version of these forums for mobile -- I am at least temporarily suspending access to Liftlines and FTO via Tapatalk. I have a number of reasons for doing this:

1. At times, Tapatalk has been problematic, at best;
2. Tapatalk prevents our native ads from running, restricting our revenue derived from forum traffic (hey, someone has to pay the bills!); and
3. I have something else up my sleeve that if it works, will be of tremendous benefit to everyone here. Unfortunately, I already know that it's incompatible with Tapatalk. If this actually works, Tapatalk will most certainly be gone from FTO on a permanent basis.

More on #3 here.

Thank you for your understanding.

[socal]

Well, I guess I'll delete Tapatalk now, it was an easy way to keep up to date on First Track but that was about all i used it for.

[Admin]

Sorry, socal...but honestly you were one of only a handful of people using it.

May I suggest doing what I did and making a web app of the forums as an icon on the home screen of your mobile device?

[Marc_C]

Yea! No more crapatalk whining at me to install the app!
Long overdue!

[Admin]

Well, I guess I'll delete Tapatalk now, it was an easy way to keep up to date on First Track but that was about all i used it for.

Hey socal, IIRC you're on Android, right? Tonight's project was to update the FTO Android app, which puts live mobile versions of both the main site and the forums under a single app, plus gives you menu access to our Facebook and Google+ pages, Twitter feed, etc. It also downloads new stories as they're published for offline reading. It's looking really good and I'll be submitting it to Google Play tonight (keep an eye for version 2.2, updates usually take a day or so to be approved). Once that's available to install you'll be nearly back to where you were with Tapatalk...but without all of the buggy behavior.

I'll post an announcement here in the FYI forum once it's available in Play.

[socal]

Ironically, I missed your messages since the link to the forums that I use on my phone/desktop is for the western forum. Only when i started using Tapatalk did i start reading all of the forums. Whatever, no big deal as it was annoying that the pictures and captions never worked right.

I'm on ios now, i think i had the android app a while back. Any chance you can make an iphone app? I know you're an android guy, as I used to be, but i'm pretty sure there are more ios users.

[Admin]

Actually, worldwide Android's market share is 82.8%, with iOS 22.3%. iOS does better in the U.S. with 43.1 market share vs. Android's 52.2% in 2015, according to Comscore. However, the reason that I haven't created an iPhone app is simply because the Apple ecosystem doesn't lend itself as easily to app creation, especially for a guy like me who learns what he's doing as he goes along.

I actually have both, as much as I personally dislike iOS it allows me to test cross-platform. I've installed the web app onto my iPhone and find that it works just as well as a dedicated app. The biggest difference is just that you don't install it from the iPhone App Store. That wasn't enough to make me wade hip deep into iOS app development.

[Marc_C]

Actually, worldwide Android's market share is 82.8%, with iOS 22.3%. iOS does better in the U.S. with 43.1 market share vs. Android's 52.2% in 2015, according to Comscore. However, the reason that I haven't created an iPhone app is simply because the Apple ecosystem doesn't lend itself as easily to app creation, especially for a guy like me who learns what he's doing as he goes along.

I actually have both, as much as I personally dislike iOS it allows me to test cross-platform. I've installed the web app onto my iPhone and find that it works just as well as a dedicated app. The biggest difference is just that you don't install it from the iPhone App Store. That wasn't enough to make me wade hip deep into iOS app development.

Thing is, it's now a lot easier to develop for iOS than it is for Android with Apple's introduction of Swift a year or so ago to replace Objective C. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-04/apple-s-big-breakthrough-that-almost-no-one-knows-about-swift-code

While the open-source approach of Android can be a strength, in many ways (as is typical of any open-source environment) it's one of its biggest weaknesses, especially since Android users are notoriously slow to update their OS. This means a much larger testing effort since at the moment there are 3 major versions of the OS in use.
"Developing for Android, meanwhile, is a more fragmented experience where developers have to develop versions of their apps for platforms that are years old since it takes so long to get new software out to devices. The most widely used version of Android right now is KitKat, which was unveiled more than two years ago. The second most widely used version is Jelly Bean, which came out three years ago. Lollipop, which released last year, is still only used by 12% of Android handsets worldwide." [ http://bgr.com/2015/06/04/ios-vs-android-apps-developers/ ]

Doesn't mean one is better than the other, but it does help explain why the majority of apps that are on both platforms often appear on iOS weeks or months ahead of Android.

[Marc_C]

...as much as I personally dislike iOS ...

On a mobile device, you shouldn't even be aware that the OS exists. If you are spending a lot of time interacting with the OS, you or the platform are doing something wrong.

[Admin]

Thing is, it's now a lot easier to develop for iOS than it is for Android with Apple's introduction of Swift a year or so ago to replace Objective C.

Want something to do?

[Marc_C]

Thing is, it's now a lot easier to develop for iOS than it is for Android with Apple's introduction of Swift a year or so ago to replace Objective C.

Want something to do?

If you buy me a development environment (which would mean a recent Mac of some sort).....and pay me!

This is worth a read as well:
http://savvyapps.com/blog/android-vs-ios-which-platform-to-build-for-first

[Admin]

Thing is, it's now a lot easier to develop for iOS than it is for Android with Apple's introduction of Swift a year or so ago to replace Objective C.

Want something to do?

If you buy me a development environment (which would mean a recent Mac of some sort).....and pay me!

Hence, FTO is available as a Web app for iOS.

[Marc_C]

Hence, FTO is available as a Web app for iOS.

Maybe it's time for you to ditch platforms named after candy and move to a real environment.

[Admin]

Hence, FTO is available as a Web app for iOS.

Maybe it's time for you to ditch platforms named after candy and move to a real environment.

When you find a real one, be sure to let me know.

[socal]

Actually, worldwide Android's market share is 82.8%, with iOS 22.3%. iOS does better in the U.S. with 43.1 market share vs. Android's 52.2% in 2015, according to Comscore. However, the reason that I haven't created an iPhone app is simply because the Apple ecosystem doesn't lend itself as easily to app creation, especially for a guy like me who learns what he's doing as he goes along.

I actually have both, as much as I personally dislike iOS it allows me to test cross-platform. I've installed the web app onto my iPhone and find that it works just as well as a dedicated app. The biggest difference is just that you don't install it from the iPhone App Store. That wasn't enough to make me wade hip deep into iOS app development.

I liked Android, and still do. I had probably 6 phones but I like the latest software and it was just annoying having to go the "hack" type route to put custom software that always seemed to have too many bugs. I miss a lot of things about android but my iphone does the job, and honestly, everyone i know has one so using imessage is pretty great for sharing photos/videos. It was tough trying to get family/friends to use hangouts for video chat so facetime is another plus since we have a kid and family 2000 miles away.

Regardless, my guess is if you broke down android vs. ios further into demographics you'd see that the skiing demographic is probably a larger percentage of users.

You're the admin, are you able to see the platform a user is on? I'd love to see the statistics on that.