Friends of hand-held devices not sporting the omnipresent "i" prefix take note: TouchOSC for Android has been published on the Android Market! And it's free. Free as in beer.
But careful now, before you get too excited let me put a couple of things straight considering this version. First of all, this port is in no way feature-compatible with the iOS versions at the moment. In particular, without beating around the bush:
- No importing of custom layouts
- No ZeroConf/Bonjour publishing/browsing
- No multi-touch support
- No support for resolutions higher than 320x480
- Some other minor features missing
In brief that means that this version basically represents the feature set that TouchOSC version 1.0 for the iPhone supported when it was first released. Minus the bugs of course. There's a couple of reasons that led to the decision to release the application in this form. First of all, I didn't want to make all of you wait any longer. Constructing a full port would have probably taken me another 12 months of trying to play catch-up with the original which is constantly improving. Secondly there seems to be an endless stream of new Android devices coming out every other moment, so testing the more advanced features on every possible configuration is basically impossible. Keeping it lean and simple will probably help in making it work for most of the available gadgets
right now.
All that said, I also decided to make the application available for free. There don't seem to be a lot of (successful) paid applications available on the Android Market right now and from my research the general user-base is also not exactly used to actually pay for apps. The ad-supported model that a lot of developers go with is also something that I wouldn't even consider at my most delirious. Call me crazy.
Anyway, what it comes down to is that I decided to go with the Donationware model. If you like it and you want me to make it as fully-featured as the iOS version, please consider donating whatever you feel is worth contributing. Also, for testing-purposes, I would be more than happy to accept any kind of Android device you can spare. Hell, if you meet me, shake my hand, buy me a beer/warm glass of milk/classic coca-cola. Just don't send me any hate-mail please. I am getting enough of that from the "iTribe" (j/k).
Yours truly,
rob.