'Project Butter' to improve responsiveness in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean - Page 2

Quote:

Originally Posted by sleepy3 

Hmmm, 

 

I wonder what features from Jelly Bean we will see Apple "Borrow" in iOS7. Just like Apple does with every android release. 

 

Multi-tasking, voice commands, pull down notification, sharing, attatching photos in e-mail without going to gallery, turn by turn navigation, etc. 

A touch based UI? Smooth scrolling and animation? Or maybe Flash Player support? Hahahaha... get it?

Quote:

Originally Posted by fredaroony 

Tell that to all the 3GS users after they updated to iOS5 

iOS 5 hosed both of my 3GS' UI performance. I since upgraded to the iPhone 4S and gave my old phones to my kids to abuse, but still, I wonder how iOS 6 will run on the 3GS.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Smallwheels 

If Google could find some type of congruency with all of its products and decide upon a clear path it would commit to, they could take over the lead even in the computer market.

Uh... what? I wasn't really into this Android vs. iOS stuff but when you said Google's gonna lead the computer market - I call BS. Hell, Google was suppose to make the web better but lately they just lost focus. Who cares about making docs in the web? If they can't take good care of their own vision, how the hell would they take care of anything especially computer OS?

At least Apple attempts to put OSes (their main vision) in nearly everything they touch - there was even rumors when Steve Jobs was alive, he was interested putting Apple OS in cars.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon 

 

Whored out?    Climb down from the ledge.   You're getting dizzy.   MacOS X itself, is based on FreeBSD - an open source version of Unix/Linux.  And yet Apple has been able to make something quite nice out of it.   I won't assume that Google can't do the same.

ANY TIME you release an OS to OEMs and thus relinquish control of it (at a critical stage) is a loud and clear declaration that you really don't give a sh*t about it. In other words, you no longer care what OEMs do with it and how it runs on their devices. This is the HIGHEST form of disrespect anyone can have for their own product. 

Google are in the mess they're in today with Android because they have no respect for their own product or the end-user that has to live with it day-in, day-out.

Yeah, I'm getting dizzy. I'm getting dizzy from the way Apple a) actually gives a damn about their product, and b) goes the extra mile *early on* to make sure that they absolutely nail the most basic elements of their OS.

Apple's business is to spoil users. Google's business is ads.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fredaroony 

lol it's not like the iPhone has never had lag...even my iPhone 4 would lag sometimes let alone a earlier model.

My iPhone 4 is slow as thick shit. Lag is a polite word to describe what ALL my applications that used to work very well now do on a regular basis. So Apple better get their act together, unless they are just writing off YET ANOTHER  GENERATION of iPhone after less than two years on the market.

Which is exactly what they have been doing to the rest of their hardware as well. If you don't have an SSD in your Mac don't bother running Lion: they didn't design lion for such old fashioned storage devices.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Postulant 

I kinda expected the 3GS to lag when updating to iOS5. But who expects their newly released Tegra 3, quad core phone to lag? That's just sad.

I have not noticed reviewers complaining about sluggishness with the Tegra 3's based Android devices. Has that been an issue?

Also, it took Mac OS X until 10.2 for Apple to finally fix their UI performance issues.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sleepy3 

Hmmm, 

 

I wonder what features from Jelly Bean we will see Apple "Borrow" in iOS7. Just like Apple does with every android release. 

 

Multi-tasking, voice commands, pull down notification, sharing, attatching photos in e-mail without going to gallery, turn by turn navigation, etc. 

 

Isn't open source free to use, like Android and Chrome using webkit?

So what.

Quote:

Originally Posted by redbarchetta 

 

Sure, just like Apple admitted Android had a better notifcation system for years.

Not "years." More like three months.  

Google doing a remake of Last Tango in Paris...

Android customers play the part of Jeanne

Google plays the part of Paul

... and Butter plays itself.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quadra 610 

 

Apple's business is to spoil users. Google's business is ads.

Both Apple and Google are in the same business:  Take money out of your pocket and put it in theirs.

So, the version after Jelly Bean is going to be Butter Bean?

Did google really improve speed of OS, or just put 2x more CPU horse power on it with a 45% screen space. the real test would be a retina capable 10" Tablet on a 2 core CPU, equivalent of iPADs.

Not taking merit on the N7 which compared to iPod Touch current limited CPU and smaller screen looks better. the tree devices follow somewhat different users. 

This is great news for us non-android users. Thank you AndroidInsider!

Quote:

Originally Posted by fredaroony 

My One X has a tegra 3 and I havent noticed any lag at all.

Interesting.  I wonder why they needed to dedicate an entire project to fixing an issue that doesn't exist.  Unless HTC already solved the problem independently on their own.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaroonMushroom 

It's great that the there will be 4 devices with it at a year and a half after launch too.

Fixed that for you.

Oh, and btw, Butter is good, but it's a bandaid.  It doesn't address the underlying issue of priority scheduling that is the cause of the lag.  Apple nailed it by allowing animation to trump all else.  Unless Android does the same, they'll only ever end up with an optimized problem.

Quote:

Originally Posted by markbyrn 


Apple would it call bug fix or a service release. Google want you to think it's a feature not to have lag, and so they call it "Project Butter" - a laughable euphemism.

Hmm, have you forgotten Snow Leopard already? An OS release which main function was to remove bloat and increase the performance of MacOS X.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quadra 610 

"Project Butter" to correct the basics that should have been nailed from Day 1, and which Apple made it their business to perfect, and did it very early on.

Are you jesting us? Have you forgotten the performance of the original iPhone address book? If you had more than a couple dozen contacts it slowed to a crawl. Have you forgotten the spinning beachball of death, present in the MacOS X finder for nearly a decade? Have you forgotten the time required for the iPhone to get a GPS lock up until the iPhone 3GS? Did you never use AppleTV, with its performance problems? Have you forgotten the original iPod, with its atrocious sync performance (even over firewire!)

Yes Apple, just like Google, worked to fix those problems. But to claim that Apple makes it their business to have perfection from day 1 is revisionism at its finest.

I've owned and used Macs since the Plus, iPods since the original 5GB, iPhones since the original, and iPads since the first version. Every single one of these products has had performance issues.

Kudos to Google for making UI smoothness issues a priority. Real Apple fans should celebrate the competition, instead of mocking it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by igxqrrl 

 

Are you jesting us?

 

 

Not at all. This "Project Butter" shows exactly where Google's priorities are: not the User Experience.

Quote:

Originally Posted by igxqrrl 

 

Real Apple fans should celebrate the competition, instead of mocking it.

 

 

You call THIS "competition"?  It's market flooding and channel-stuffing, with OEMs stuck in a race to the bottom. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by sleepy3 

Hmmm, 

 

I wonder what features from Jelly Bean we will see Apple "Borrow" in iOS7. Just like Apple does with every android release. 

 

Multi-tasking, voice commands, pull down notification, sharing, attatching photos in e-mail without going to gallery, turn by turn navigation, etc. 

Google copied turn by turn navigation from GPS device makers. 

There is no easy fix for using Java. Java has always suck in UI parts, Android and Dalvik VM makes no difference. Microsoft has done the same mistake with WP7 by using their own Silverlight VM and they recently reboot the whole platform to follow Apple way of running native C code driving C lib, which is the way to get the best performance out of a CPU. Android blob of open source goo with "special" Google seasoning is really ugly from a technological standpoint.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gazoobee 

 

Not "years." More like three months.  

What? The Android notification system has been around since the G1. Apple only just recently adopted it, hence "years."

Quote:

Originally Posted by anantksundaram 

Oh relax..... occasionally, it's fine, I think.

 

I have a good belly laugh reading many of the comments (and the pathetic -- and I am guessing paid -- fandroid attempts at rebuttals and comebacks).

I wonder if there are Apple fan bois who visit Android news & rumor sites to troll?     Are there any Android news & rumor sites?

Triple buffer with v-sync sounds like some overhead that only certain devices will be able to support.  Also sounds like the are grasping for straws because they are inherently flawed because they are running bytecode in a VM and the graphics are not that easy to handoff to the GPU units. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gazoobee 

I think the issue is that Google and all the Android supporters spent the first three revisions of the OS and the last five years or so claiming that these problems didn't exist, and now (by copying an Apple technique BTW), they attempt to fix them with a special "patch" that runs in the background constantly.  It certainly deserves a huge eye roll at the least.  

 

The OS should have been designed properly from the beginning, but then it wasn't really designed for the devices it actually runs on anyway was it?  

And regardless, this isn't going to affect the 90% of users who are still on 2.x (not making that stat up, BTW. It's straight from Google's own usage site.) So once the admission is made that it was a problem, it becomes an acknowledged problem for 90% of current Android users.

My wife had an Android phone and the UI lag was shit. My iPhone 3G (which I got a few months before she got her phone) outperformed hers consistently for the whole time we owned them. (We both have 4S now and she's particularly happy with it.) I feel genuinely sorry for people who got caught up in the Android hype and are stuck with 2.x phones.

Quote:

Originally Posted by zeejay21 

 

Uh... what? I wasn't really into this Android vs. iOS stuff but when you said Google's gonna lead the computer market - I call BS. Hell, Google was suppose to make the web better but lately they just lost focus. Who cares about making docs in the web? If they can't take good care of their own vision, how the hell would they take care of anything especially computer OS?

 

At least Apple attempts to put OSes (their main vision) in nearly everything they touch - there was even rumors when Steve Jobs was alive, he was interested putting Apple OS in cars.

Google created the Chrome OS. You must have forgotten about that one. They could do the exact same thing with the Chrome OS as they are doing with their Android OS. They could use Motorola, and the knowledge those people have about creating products, and expand into computers. They are starting with this tablet. If they get it right and succeed they can eventually expand into computers if they choose using the Chrome OS.

Think about it. Apple doesn't design the chips in their computers nor do they manufacture chips. They design tweaks to the ARM processors and someone else does the manufacturing. Google could do the same thing Apple is doing for its computer line and be considered a manufacturer just as much as Apple.

Apple makes two operating systems. Google makes two operating systems.

Apple has other people make their iPads. Google has other people make their Nexus 7.

If Google could decide to stick with something for a long term and make a product work, even with a couple of so so efforts, they could improve enough and potentially lead in any market. They have the resources. They aren't stuck to some outdated mantra the way Microsoft is stuck.

The consumer computer market is morphing away from laptops and desktops to smart phones and tablets. Google might not have a desire to develop a full blown desktop machine to compete with a Mac Pro. Creating an awesome tablet seems to be the logical way to go. The Nexus 7 is a start.

I want to buy a 7" device of some sort this year. It won't be for computing. It will be for entertainment via video, internet, and books. Anything that can do those things well with a good interface and good navigation will get my money. I'm willing to wait until the end of September to make my purchase. I'll wait just because by then Apple will have updated their iPod line. Maybe Apple will debut a larger iPod device that fills my requirements. If Apple doesn't do it then I'll consider the Android side of the equation. It is because Apple makes good things that I'm willing to wait instead of getting something now.

How's that notification menu treating you? Right, then stfu.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tallest Skil 


I will. Once it exists.

yea okay...

to deny that Android is the ONLY healthy competitor to iOS is the very definition of blind fanboism.

I get that you fellate Apple's for fun, that's understandable...but don't tear our your eyes and call reality blind.

Quote:

Originally Posted by redbarchetta 

 

Weird, because my iPhone 3G occassionally lagged with the original OS, but then became practically unusable (and I mean that without an ounce of hyperbole) with iOS 4.

You must be lying then.

J.

Quote:

Originally Posted by d-range 


Interestingly, triple buffering actually increases input lag, by one frame (or about 16 ms) to be precise. V-sync doesn't really add any overhead in terms of processing, but it doesn't help a lot to increase rendering performance either. Only if you have a device that is rendering at over 60 fps right now, but with major spikes and dips in the framerate, syncing at 60 fps may improve perceived smoothness of animations. If you have a device that renders very close to 60 fps max, adding vsync will again worsen input lag and perceived UI smoothness, because vsync will effectively peg the rendering speed to 60 fps, 30 fps or 15 fps, ie: you will see major choppiness if you have a device that would be rendering just below 60 fps with spikes above it, if it were rendering without vsync.
All of this is about the most basic knowledge of rendering and has been known in the game industry for over 30 years, so it's almost a joke that Google is trying to spin this as some kind of major innovation that will all of a sudden fix all the UI lagginess you see on every Android device, no matter how fast the hardware.
The Android shills hanging around here are really getting a little predictable by the way, just repeating anecdotes how they really do not experience any input lag even though Google apparently does, and pointing to completely unrelated (supposed) problems the iPhone would have, even going back as far as the 3GS which is now over 3 years old, it's not really cutting it anymore guys. Not really good advertising for Android if even the shills can't come up with anything better anymore.

Actually, no. Triple buffering has to do with decoupling the CPU and GPU and reduces the time the CPU has to wait because it has an extra (decoupled) buffer to write in.

Syncing processes to the display refresh rate is the right thing to do, but requires of course that the rendering is finished before the deadline expires.

This is an application (design) issue and apparently all Goole is saying is that you now have the tools (API) to do so.

Probably comparable to CADisplayLink available on IOS 3.0 and later.

J.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jnjnjn 

 

Actually, no. Triple buffering has to do with decoupling the CPU and GPU and reduces the time the CPU has to wait because it has an extra (decoupled) buffer to write in.

Syncing processes to the display refresh rate is the right thing to do, but requires of course that the rendering is finished before the deadline expires.

This is an application (design) issue and apparently all Goole is saying is that you now have the tools (API) to do so.

Probably comparable to CADisplayLink available on IOS 3.0 and later.

 

J.

Not really, what you are describing is what double-buffering is for. Triple-buffering is adding yet another off-screen backbuffer, to be able to smooth out dips and spikes in rendering time. This way you don't have to drop frames when one or two frames take longer than 1/60th of a second to render. Since you are basically pipelining frames, you are also introducing latency (=lag), because when the content to render changes (e.g. by user interaction), there are still two frames queued that have to be flipped to the on-screen framebuffer before the frame with the new content can be displayed. 

Single-buffering (directly rendering to the framebuffer) is almost never used because it introduces drawing artefacts (you can see the screen getting 'painted'). Quadruple-buffering (or more) is almost never used because of the latency it indroduces, and because of the extra RAM it takes. Double and triple buffering are more or less standard fare in rendering, and have always been.

I didn't get from the article whether Jellybean is introducing V-synced rendering (ie: limiting screen refresh rate to 60, 30 or 15 fps), or just adding an API that allows applications to schedule rendering operations using the display refresh rate (such as CADisplayLink does). Anyway, again, both things are standard fare on almost everything that renders any kind of animation.