Meanwhile, Over in Androidtown

John Gruber writing over at Daring Fireball

None of these Android clients would garner any attention at all on iOS. Tooot and the official Mastodon client are also available on iOS, and seemingly offer the same features and same basic interfaces on both platforms. There’s a reason third-party clients are overwhelmingly more popular on iOS than Mastodon’s official client — yet the Mastodon app is clearly among the best on Android. It’s really just a different world over in Androidtown. Things like fluid scrolling, swipe gestures, and tap-and-hold contextual menus are table stakes for an iOS app. None of the Android clients scroll fluidly, none offer swipe gestures, and only Tooot seems to offer a tap-and-hold contextual menu. But more broadly they all just look and especially feel inert and rigid. Nothing shrinks or stretches. There’s no life to them.

It’s interesting to me the differences between the two platforms when it comes to Mastodon. Twitter used to be the design playground on iOS in the early years before Twitter clamped down on third party clients. Mastodon is the new playground, and it seems developers on Android just don’t want to play.