These Aren’t the ‘Droids You’re Looking For – Why is SL Remote for IOS only??
- Article #1712516
- Added on Feb 23, 2012 at 2:14 PM
By Bob Tudor, Chief Technology Officer, PreSonus Audio Electronics
Of late, many existing and prospective PreSonus StudioLive users have inquired about our decision not to support the Android platform with remote-control applications like StudioLive Remote and QMix. We understand the enthusiasm for the Android platform, and given the number of inquiries we’ve received, we felt it best to formally address the question.
iOS and Android are based on different and mutually incompatible technologies. We cannot adapt our existing iOS versions of StudioLive Remote and QMix to function on Android and would have to rewrite the software from the ground up.
Furthermore, unlike iOS, Android devices are not standardized. Android devices run numerous Android OS versions and feature varied screen sizes. To support this range of variables would multiply development time, as we would have to test, tweak, and maintain the software for any and all variations of Android OS and device screen size. Our iOS applications provide a great user experience in part because the fixed sizes of the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad screens allow us to design for known and expected hardware and a single OS.
In addition, we frequently update our software to add new features. If we included Android, our mobile applications would take longer to release, we would not be able to release as many updates, and the applications would provide a less consistent user experience.
Therefore, in order to provide a superior user experience and ensure our ability to regularly update and improve our software, we have chosen to focus our time on rich, new features instead of platform parity. For these reasons, we’ve decided to stick with iOS for the near future.
