Apple’s first(lame) Android App

A colleague of mine sent me a link to 9to5Mac.com in slack. It was about the first Android App(Move to iOS) written by Apple getting really bad reviews. I took sometime to dig deeper into the Apple’s first Android app. The app didn’t go very well with the Android users. At the time of writing there were 6,057 reviews with 1,8 as the average rating.

Out of curiosity I downloaded the App onto my device and to see why there is so much of outcry by the Android users(disclaimer: I use a nexus 5 and a macbook pro for work). As one reviewer mentioned, I do quite agree with his statement of “Android fans trolling the Apple’s first Android app”.

APK teardown.

My “Android” mind has somehow convinced me to look into the app to see how Apple, an archrival platform company is writing an Android App. Some of the below findings may surprise you.

The App has had only one reference to apple in the entire code (package name is defined as “com.apple.movetoios” for android people). The rest of them references to a company called mediamushroom.com, a company based in Cambridge, UK.

Who is Media Mushroom?

Media mushroom has two Android apps in the Google play store named Device switch and Copy my Data (this app is available in iOS as well). Both these apps were last updated on Dec 2014 and Sep 2014 respectively. By this fact it's safe to assume that media mushroom had some expertise in backing up Android device data to a different device or to the cloud.

Move to iOS is exact copy of the above mentioned app with an Apple Logo on it.

Is Apple so desperate?

There has been several theories on this app. There is a certain degree of desperation and rush from apple in their first Android app attempt.

Apple design with the signature “terms and conditions” page. (BTW, the licences are hardcoded in the assets directory, wtf ?)

So Apple didn’t even had time to refactor the code. (Androidmanifest.xml)

<application android:theme="@style/AppTheme" android:label="@string/MOVE_TO_IOS_TITLE" android:icon="@drawable/ic_launcher" android:allowBackup="true">
    <activity android:label="@string/MOVE_TO_IOS_TITLE" android:name="com.mediamushroom.copymydata.ui.PageViewActivity" android:screenOrientation="portrait">
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
            <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
        </intent-filter>
    </activity>
    <receiver android:name="com.mediamushroom.copymydata.restserversdk.EMWifiPeerConnector">
        <intent-filter>
            <action android:name="android.net.wifi.STATE_CHANGE" />
            <action android:name="android.net.conn.CONNECTIVITY_CHANGE" />
            <action android:name="android.net.ConnectivityManager.CONNECTIVITY_ACTION" />
        </intent-filter>
    </receiver>
</application>

Code is not of Production Quality (Logs everywhere , No Obfuscation)

In my view, Apple failed massively in their first Android app attempt for the above reasons. I am not going to look at the code deeper to be more disappointed. At least it is time for them to do a retrospective on this massive failure.

Apple had it coming!

Still it is beyond me on why a company like Apple, who have been known for their phenomenal engineering skills made such a lame attempt to build their first Android app and rushed without any QA.