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The developers of the popular mobile social networking tool TweetDeck have hit back after Apple CEO Steve Jobs claimed Android ‘fragmentation’ represented a ‘daunting challenge’ to developers.
In a controversial appearance in an earnings call, the Apple boss delivered a surprising set of criticisms against rivals from Google’s Android, to 7-inch tablets and Blackberry-maker RIM. Jobs spent the most time discussing Android, calling the open/closed operating system speak from Google ‘disingenuous’ and a ‘smoke screen’ against the real issue, Android version fragmentation.
As one of the key arguments, Jobs pointed to the recent release of the TweetDeck client on Android. “They reported that they had to contend with more than a hundred different versions of Android software on 244 different handsets,” he said. “The multiple hardware and software iterations present developers with a daunting challenge. “
TweetDeck CEO Iain Dodsworth fired back in a tweet: “ Errr nope, no we didn’t. It wasn’t.” Dodsworth pointed out that the Android client was developed by just two people.
In a rather more cryptic response to the criticisms made by Jobs, Google’s Android chief Andy Rubin tweeted a ‘definition of open’ before including the technical command line which would download the Android source code and build the open source OS from scratch for anyone.
