- Dell, HP, Compaq, Acer, etc didn't invent entirely new UI's for the computers they sold: everybody's OS looked basically identical and had similar interface elements and metaphors.
- Screen sizes and resolutions increased slowly and didn't involve taking over the entire screen as with smartphones. Software that previously took up the whole screen at 1024x768 simply ran as a smaller window at 2560x1440 and wasn't forced to scale up to full screen.
Android apps that are designed for smaller screens leave black space on the new mega-screened phones. Users pan you in the reviews pretty hard for this, though. The expectations for apps that conform properly to every phone are a lot higher than they used to be on early PCs, I think.
I don't think early PC games had such a direct feedback mechanism as the Android store has.
Evil developer didn't allow his app to run on your phone? Punishing him is only 2 clicks away!
App doesn't have a feature you want? Blackmailing the author by giving him a 1 star review is only 2 clicks away!
Reminds me a bit of the restaurants complaining about online reviews.
My app was written for the G1 by a friend on a correspondingly early version of the SDK back when the G1 was the only Android handset, and it doesn't scale up to full screen on the bigger phones. It might be the case that they've released autoscaling and it just wasn't around when it was developed, or it might just be that he used the SDK improperly and neglected some existing autoscaling options.
Yes, as you guessed, the problem you're seeing is because the app was developed for a very early version of the Android API. Here's how to fix the app (requires a recompile):
"If your [applications] manifest file has either android:minSdkVersion or android:targetSdkVersion set to "4" or higher, then the Android system will scale your application's layout and assets to fit the current device screen, whether the device screen is smaller or larger than the one for which you originally designed your application. As such, you should always test your application on real or virtual devices with various screen sizes and densities."
- Screen sizes and resolutions increased slowly and didn't involve taking over the entire screen as with smartphones. Software that previously took up the whole screen at 1024x768 simply ran as a smaller window at 2560x1440 and wasn't forced to scale up to full screen.