IOS 7??? What About Android

Regarding the IOS7 issue Naim were not alone with this.

Sonos also has issues and their email to customers said "Unfortunately, we have encountered some issues related to the Sonos Controller for iPhone and iPad and the final, released version of iOS 7"

I have a feeling Apple may have made some last minute changes which have caught vendors out.

Richard

Fair enough. We are, of course, making assumptions without all the facts. If late-breaking issues were only discovered in the final release, then of course Naim could not have predicted that and is doing the right thing by fixing them as a priority.

This is really a completely separate argument to the case being made for Android support. How many shopping days until Christmas? :-)

Adrian

That's simply not true Frank I'm a naim user and have never used IOS. Many people including myself bought naim gear on the understanding that an android version of nstream was only a matter of months away.

Agreed Adrian, why do guys think this is an Android vs IOS debate ? As I said previously this is not an either/or situation.

It's not at all unusual for tech specs on OS platforms to change right before release, but it is unusual for them to affect apps running on the platform. Not unheard of, but unusual. Sometimes app producers imply it's an OS issue though.

Developing for Android isn't especially hard. It used to be (fragmentation, etc) but there's not much difference now. Indeed, recent experience suggests IOS fragmentation is much the same these days. If you have a stable app on IOS it isn't a stretch to build the same thing for Android.

I suspect the reality is resource constraints versus the user base. All the quoted stats are good, but we don't know how many Naim customers have Android - other data would suggest Android sells to younger buyers with lower disposable income than IOS.

And Windows Phone is starting to catch up to iPhone in the UK too (7%ish). Plus there's the Windows 8 market, if Microsoft ever gets its act together.

Complex business, making apps.

Ho hum. I want Naim to fix the IOS version first, if there has to be a choice. But I think they should follow that with an Android version and live up to the promise they made.

Surely the sensible thing would be for Naim to give some sort of indication on the possibility of an Android app in the near future. Even if it's a not happening any time soon statement.

At least that way people would now. Alternatively bundle an iPod Touch with its streamers.

(Radical, I know)

Apple do offer discounts for bulk buys. They could buy a couple of hundred and offer them to customers at a discounted price for non-iOS using customers.

It's obviously not going to happen, mind you.

My point being is that I was seriously thinking of my changing my SN and SB Touch to a SU but seeing as there is no dedicated Android control Naim has lost a sale.................

Bluetorric

Why not do the same and buy an iPod touch for remote operation?

They are pretty cheap s/h.

Jon,

In the various threads where this has been discussed, somebody eventually makes the same suggestion: "just buy an iDevice, they are cheap/you'll love it/they're really useful/etc. etc". The point is, the people asking for Android support generally have Android devices performing all the general duties people use an iTouch/Pad for (browsing, checking the weather, iPlayer, news, and so on). So, spending more money on a device that's incompatible with the rest of your network and whose sole duty is to act as a remote control for a Naim system is a completely redundant purchase.

Adrian

Tony,

My point was that, other than the few users who stick with the Naim remote control and Desktop client, all n-Stream users are on the IOS platform. As for why this is an Android Vs. IOS debate, it's because the OP posted a complaint that Naim were focussing on IOS rather than providing Android.

As for buying on the understanding that android was only a short while away, I'm afraid that is the danger of buying vapourware. One of the reasons I haven't bought a streamer is because there is no android support - to be fair, I also have questions about the whole paradigm, but the control mechanism is heavily tied in with this and I agree with Adrian - I do not see why I should have to buy a platform just to control my Naim streamer properly, and I don't see why I should use another control mechanism (e.g. Bubble) which doesn't have half the features of the Naim one. It's not a question merely of the money (and I would argue that buying a 2nd hand iTouch for £150 is not tuppence), but the principle of the situation.

Regards,
Frank.
All opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinion of any organisations I work for, except where this is stated explicitly.

Thanks for clarifying your views Frank. Not sure what vapourware is to be honest but I think naim should have made no mention at all about an Android app unless they fully intended to make it available in a reasonable period.

I've always thought Naim to be curiously caught between two stools on platform support.

On the one hand, the streamer OS is (I've read on the forum) based on embedded Windows and supports UPnP -- not a protocol natively supported by MacOS, therefore making an all-Mac environment somewhat difficult to build given the quality of available third-party UPnP server implementations on MacOS. And it was only recently that the streamer upgrade installer was made available for Mac as well as Windows.On the other hand, the control point software is iOS only...

Platform stability, available resources, market share and a host of other factors have obviously all played a part in making these decisions but it does leave Naim with what appears on the face of it an oddly inconsistent approach...

Hey Tony,

Vapourware...all software is vapourware until it's released. Before release, it simply doesn't exist. I've been bitten (from both software producer side and customer side) several times in the past. The thing is, things happen beyond a developer's control which just screw all plans. I currently work for a huge software company and we are expressly forbidden to talk about forthcoming releases/projects/etc. until the thing actually goes out the door. It's small consolation I know, but it's the way it is.

Adrian, yes it is rather odd isn't it, especially with having a Desktop Client for PC but not for Apple computers. I guess when they started out, Naim wanted to hit the highest volume of users and figured that PCs were 100-1 at the time so the PC made sense, but that the Apple devices made more sense as they had complete dominance at the time. To be fair, the complexion of the mobile market has changed dramatically in a very short space of time. Android has only really stabilised with the v4 release which happened toward the end of last year.

Regards,
Frank.
All opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinion of any organisations I work for, except where this is stated explicitly.

Thanks for the explanation Frank.