I recently got to play with a Palm Pre at a concert I was at. The individual did international business and traveled a lot, which was part of his reasoning behind his purchase. Price being the other.
I was quite impressed. The GUI was real slick and intuitive, but what impressed me most was how it handled multiple applications ( not much different then exposé).
As far as the phone itself, it felt cheaper and clunky compared to the iPhone, and how anyone can type a message on those tiny keypads is still a mystery to me
The accuracy and response was not as sharp as the iPhone, and there was a slight delay in some cases, it felt as if it was a graphics problem more then the touchpad.
The screen was bright and the colours were vibrant, yet the overall appearance felt cramped because of the 'frame' they put around it. (Apple did it right by extending the the glass over the entire surface).... I don't understand people who put case's and covers on their iphones... changes the entire feel and user experience of the device.
Can't wait until Apple gives us multiple application ability. This summer?
A kid I know (he's 25) seemed to run through a new smartphone/app-phone every 6 months or so. Motorola Q, Palm Treo, iPhone, Palm Pre, etc.
He had an iPhone, but got the Pre the day they came out. He was so proud of it. It was so much nicer than his iPhone. When I played with his, it was nice, but not a game changer in my mind.
Amusingly, he gave up his Pre within the 30 day return period allowed by California. He just couldn't stand it after that long compared to the iPhone. When he lost his iPhone a few months ago, he replaced it with another. Speaks volumes to me.
Choice is good, though. I'm glad there's some decent competition to Apple now...we're sure to get more out of Apple in the way of hardware and software boosts with Android and HTC nipping at their heels so closely now then we would have otherwise.
As someone else pointed out, it looks like the person's finger was actually very jittery. Hardly a fair or reasonable test.
How do you account for the huge variances? The individual was doing his best to make straight lines. That's all. Let's assume he was doing his best to steady his finger. For each device he's got several chances. Why are nearly all the lines significantly wavy on one device while quite straight on another? Did he suddenly develop some sort of vertigo when testing the Droid? Did his finger move around wildly on each of those lines on the Droid yet remain quite steady when testing the iPhone?
Let's be reasonable here.
Watch the video.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hattig
Hmm, I've just tried that same test on my HTC Hero, and the lines are all smooth and straight, and right to the edge.
How do you account for the huge variances? The individual was doing his best to make straight lines. That's all. Let's assume he was doing his best to steady his finger. For each device he's got several chances. Why are nearly all the lines significantly wavy on one device while quite straight on another? Did he suddenly develop some sort of vertigo when testing the Droid? Did his finger move around wildly on each of those lines on the Droid yet remain quite steady when testing the iPhone?
Let's be reasonable here.
Watch the video.
And the patterns the lesser phones were making are not easily created by a jittery hand. They are much too uniform.
On the flip side, I think that they should use a different method for testing. Specifically, get a stylus with different size points and a machine that will control the speed. This will make the test much more accurate and allow for more nuanced results.
So what do you plan to tell them when they can't sync their Apps and playlists to a new phone?
Quote:
Originally Posted by DistortedLoop
I've advised a dozen or more friends to go to the iPhone the last couple of years. If I switch to Android and start recommending it over the iPhone, I am certain most of those friends will follow along.
Apple shouldn't ignore some of these issues much longer.
Having both used Droids and owning an iPhone, I can totally support this article. My mothers Droid's touchscreen was a pain to work with, nothing felt fluid or accurate, and fast motions never translated well.
I don't think it's just a hardware issue either, I've seen the same responsiveness issue on many android devices, though it's notably bad on the Droids I've used.
I once had a Dell Pocket PC that was more accurate than the android phones I've used, of course it didn't have to worry about multitouch.
Speaking of multitouch, interesting that this test shows accuracy & doesn't even get into how well the systems perform with multitouch tasks. That would be an interesting round 2.
I'm Apple all the way but to some people other functionality might be more important than precise touch 100% all of the time. i.e. multiple open apps, printing, blah blah blah.
Unless your doing a lot of text I don't see pin point accuracy being that important. Maybe if you want to quickly hide the boobs photo from your boss and accidentally load a shlong shot.
I think most of us would agree that accuracy is important. No background apps means more powerful apps. There are limited resources on the iPhone. If it could run background apps, no app could push the system because it would bog down. I think ease of suspending and resuming apps along with push notifications is good enough. Background apps also drain power. It is not a computer. It will work as a phone in the background. That is good enough. Maybe when we see 2 GHz+ phones, Apple could rethink this.
BTW, I don't know what you do with your phone... but with those closing remarks I wouldn't care about precise touch because I wouldn't want to touch that phone.
I think most of us would agree that accuracy is important. No background apps means more powerful apps. There are limited resources on the iPhone. If it could run background apps, no app could push the system because it would bog down. I think ease of suspending and resuming apps along with push notifications is good enough. Background apps also drain power. It is not a computer. It will work as a phone in the background. That is good enough. Maybe when we see 2 GHz+ phones, Apple could rethink this.
BTW, I don't know what you do with your phone... but with those closing remarks I wouldn't care about precise touch because I wouldn't want to touch that phone.
The Push Notifications are a brilliant idea and much better than running an app in the background that doesn?t need to be actively running, like streaming music. The beauty is that the developer uses the Apple created API to turn on this feature and controls which notification types the user can receive and which ones he can turn on and off.
I think background apps will come with v4.0. It will be in the next iPhone and I think turned on for the 3GS. From what I can see, the biggest limitation to the iPhone?s background capabilities is the amount of RAM, not the processing. The first two iPhones had 128MB RAM. The OS takes up about that without actually running any additional apps. You try to multi-task with the iPod app while using Safari with multiple pages and you get lag, potentially even some iPod audio playback issues. The 256MB in the 3GS made this much better and I am sure there is enough RAM for many if not most 3rd-party background apps.
I think the real question is: How will Apple implement background apps when the way you exit out of the device is to click the Home Button?
BTW, I don't know what you do with your phone... but with those closing remarks I wouldn't care about precise touch because I wouldn't want to touch that phone.
BTW, I don't know what you're thinking, but I wouldn't want you touching my phone. What a stupid comment. Mind your own business.
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism
The Push Notifications are a brilliant idea and much better than running an app in the background that doesn’t need to be actively running, like streaming music. The beauty is that the developer uses the Apple created API to turn on this feature and controls which notification types the user can receive and which ones he can turn on and off.
I think background apps will come with v4.0. It will be in the next iPhone and I think turned on for the 3GS. From what I can see, the biggest limitation to the iPhone’s background capabilities is the amount of RAM, not the processing. The first two iPhones had 128MB RAM. The OS takes up about that without actually running any additional apps. You try to multi-task with the iPod app while using Safari with multiple pages and you get lag, potentially even some iPod audio playback issues. The 256MB in the 3GS made this much better and I am sure there is enough RAM for many if not most 3rd-party background apps.
I think the real question is: How will Apple implement background apps when the way you exit out of the device is to click the Home Button?
Push notifications are better than nothing yes. Nothing ground breaking though. All they do is inform you when you have mail. It's like a door with a door bell but has no door handle to open it. You STILL have to close the app and check your mail. NOW...if the push alert had a popup that showed you who the mail was from that would be a different story. "Oh ok, it's only Chang's House of Spaghetti. I'll keep on playing my video game or finish my journal". That's a feature that can make up for the lack of multitasking.
I'm not complaining because I accept that those features could be missing for a while plus the iPhone is still the best, but I do except these features to be available in 2010 for v 4.0. Three years is a LONG time. If all we get every iteration are camera MP and processor bumps it's not much. (Unless of course the processor gives us.....multitasking
Push notifications are great HOWEVER all they do is inform you when you have mail. You STILL have to close the app and check your mail. NOW...if the push alert had a popup that showed you who the mail was from that would be a different story. "Oh ok, it's only Chang's House of Spaghetti. I'll keep on playing my video game or finish my journal". That's a feature that can make up for the lack of multitasking.
That is not the Push Notification service I was referring to, but you do bring up a great point. The PN service I was referring was for 3rd-party devs and that does have a pop up that displays the info, like when you get an SMS.
Mail is the only app with a Push service through MobileMe or Exchange that only make a sound or vibration with no option to vary those settings or to have a popup display the name, subject and/or body of the message. I hope they include that because sometimes I do want my incoming mail to be a pop up. What would really be nice are Mail rules in v4.0. For instance, you can have anyone in your address book become a visual mail notification but not mail from others that may be spam.
The whole notification service is flawed. It was fine for v1.x but it wasn?t designed with a future-forward focus on usage. The touchscreen is accurate enough that we should be able to have access to your notifications from the Menu Bar or click the Home Button x-many times. I?d like to even see the ringer switch get an extra function as button, not just a toggle switch that could add optional features without marring the iPhone?s simple HW design.
Finally, the OS is robust enough that there should be an entire app dedicated to notifications. Right now notifications go away and you have to recall what app it was for. There is no running history with the various apps using the pop up notifications. Perhaps the right-swipe to get to the search page would be useful for that. Right now I find it fairly useless but do like the way the search itself works with the app icons showing up on the left column. I think that would be a great system search and notification history combination that you could toggle between.
That is not the Push Notification service I was referring to, but you do bring up a great point. The PN service I was referring was for 3rd-party devs and that does have a pop up that displays the info, like when you get an SMS.
SMS...there's another piece of doodoo. They don't even use SMS here in Japan so that wouldn't be very useful. Is SMS used outside of North America? You have instant email you don't need another messaging function unless it contains video (still waiting for my iPhone iChat app). To me SMS is like pagers from the 80's. Apparently North America is SMS hungry though. To be fair they do have a version of mail here called C-Mail which is SMS like. Limited to the carrier. No one uses it because it's very limited in character count, very ugly, archaic, no photos etc.
You're talking about push notifications within apps like eBuddy [great btw] right? Or how bout our absent iChat LOL
I'd imagine that it wouldn't be a notifications app but more of a settings/prefs panel. You could set the popup to be just a small red circle or a white balloon with the from and subject and even a voice alert. Complete with transparency and size options.
Come to think of it, there's no reason why the next iPhone couldn't be fully capable of doing iChat video. Don't suppose we'll see that for another 8 years.
SMS...there's another piece of doodoo. They don't even use SMS here in Japan so that wouldn't be very useful. Is SMS used outside of North America? You have instant email you don't need another messaging function unless it contains video (still waiting for my iPhone iChat app). To me SMS is like pagers from the 80's. Apparently North America is SMS hungry though. To be fair they do have a version of mail here called C-Mail which is SMS like. Limited to the carrier. No one uses it because it's very limited in character count, very ugly, archaic, no photos etc.
SMS is used in the US but I think it?s popular throughout most of the world, especially Europe. I don?t utilize it, but it works well for those who don?t have phones with rich email clients. The MMS part of SMS can due images, documents, audio and video so it does open itself up to more uses. SMS no longer has the 160 character limit these days, at least no on AT&T, and it works across all US carriers with accuracy.
Quote:
You're talking about push notifications within apps like eBuddy [great btw] right
I don?t know about eBuddy, but Apple?s Push Notification that came to v3.0, though later than originally planned, works outside the 3rd-party apps. It allows developers to use an API that will tie a single process that does continually run in the background of your iPhone so that it can constantly await for new messages. This allows me to have my FaceBook, Twitter, IM client, etc. all running offline but still receiving messages as pop ups, with a sound and/or vibration with little overhead to resources or hit on the battery life. You can potentially have an infinite number of these apps running since all the heavy work is done off the device.
Apple uses XMPP for their MobileMe mail which I think is completely different from their PSN. I have no idea how the ActiveSync to Exchange works.
Quote:
Or how bout our absent iChat LOL
I don?t they?ll that to the iPhone. With the iPhone so popular in the world and Apple gaining nothing from an IM client this is better served by 3rd-parties. They?d have to support AIM, MSN, Yahoo, FaceBook and world of other clients that I can?t even recall right now. Personally, I don?t think they can outdo Beejive and I already hate that there are iPhone apps that I can?t remove because Apple won?t let me.
Quote:
Come to think of it, there's no reason why the next iPhone couldn't be fully capable of doing iChat video. Don't suppose we'll see that for another 8 years.
Maybe they?ll add something like a 0.3Mpx camera to the device for video chatting. I suppose a novelty feature like that depends on several factors like how much are adding this time around (adding too much in one build could make the 2011 version seem lackluster in comparison), what the competition is doing, etc.
That is not the Push Notification service I was referring to, but you do bring up a great point. The PN service I was referring was for 3rd-party devs and that does have a pop up that displays the info, like when you get an SMS.
Mail is the only app with a Push service through MobileMe or Exchange that only make a sound or vibration with no option to vary those settings or to have a popup display the name, subject and/or body of the message. I hope they include that because sometimes I do want my incoming mail to be a pop up. What would really be nice are Mail rules in v4.0. For instance, you can have anyone in your address book become a visual mail notification but not mail from others that may be spam.
The whole notification service is flawed. It was fine for v1.x but it wasn’t designed with a future-forward focus on usage. The touchscreen is accurate enough that we should be able to have access to your notifications from the Menu Bar or click the Home Button x-many times. I’d like to even see the ringer switch get an extra function as button, not just a toggle switch that could add optional features without marring the iPhone’s simple HW design.
Finally, the OS is robust enough that there should be an entire app dedicated to notifications. Right now notifications go away and you have to recall what app it was for. There is no running history with the various apps using the pop up notifications. Perhaps the right-swipe to get to the search page would be useful for that. Right now I find it fairly useless but do like the way the search itself works with the app icons showing up on the left column. I think that would be a great system search and notification history combination that you could toggle between.
Up. It's always seemed to me to be a logical extension of the iPhone's UI to use Up, Down, and Left as specialty screens. Apple has already used Left for search, I would think that Up for a notifications screen would be ideal. You could leave it there, if you wanted, making it your home screen, and go down for apps.
With an entire screen to work with, Apple could give notifications the app treatment you're talking about, with ways to navigate to additional history pages or settings.
That doesn't entirely solve the problem of how you do in app notifications without being unduly intrusive, but at least you would know you could dismiss a pop-up until you were ready to deal with it and have somewhere to go with a persistent record of everything you hadn't acknowledged.
So what do you plan to tell them when they can't sync their Apps and playlists to a new phone?
Well you certainly missed my point and focused in on just one thing...
Short answer: the bulk of them aren't iTunes users to begin with, so that's not an issue. Really.
For me, and probably you, iTunes is a strong chain binding us to the iPod/iPhone ecosystem, but for people who aren't big music listeners, the killer app for the iPhone isn't really a killer at all.
As I do more reading, it seems there are solutions out there for Android users; even solutions that work with iTunes. Windows solutions seem more abundant (but isn't that always the case), but there's something called Songbird that supposedly works well, and I forget the name, but in another thread someone mentioned a Mac app that moved iTunes songs and playlists to any USB device, and for the Automator/AppleScript fans, there are even some tools already floating the Android Community Forums.
That wasn't my point at all, though. My point was that as strong as Apple's marketshare and mindshare has been, when they were pretty much the only game in town for the AppPhone market, that lead is starting to erode and Apple is going to have to give us a bit more than a slight speed bump or other minor upgrades. You may not feel the urge to leave, but there are plenty of posts from people frustrated with the iPhone universe that seem to be looking for an opportunity to jump ship once something good enough comes along, and the Droid/Eris/Nexus1 seem to be getting pretty close.
We'll see what Apple comes up with, and hopefully give a peek at in a couple of weeks.
Up. It's always seemed to me to be a logical extension of the iPhone's UI to use Up, Down, and Left as specialty screens. Apple has already used Left for search, I would think that Up for a notifications screen would be ideal. You could leave it there, if you wanted, making it your home screen, and go down for apps.
With an entire screen to work with, Apple could give notifications the app treatment you're talking about, with ways to navigate to additional history pages or settings.
Nice! Up does work better than my idea as you can access it from any Home Screen.
Nice! Up does work better than my idea as you can access it from any Home Screen.
Yeah, and Apple could address that complaints about that grid of apps starting to look "tired" by letting you have that notification screen serve as a home screen, plus things like weather widgets and the like. You could have the screen you glance at have a lot of useful, current into, with all your apps just a flick away.
And yes, I'm aware that other phones already do this, and I don't imagine that Apple will have "invented" same, for any lunatics closely monitoring the discussion for thought crime.
Yeah, and Apple could address that complaints about that grid of apps starting to look "tired" by letting you have that notification screen serve as a home screen, plus things like weather widgets and the like. You could have the screen you glance at have a lot of useful, current into, with all your apps just a flick away.
And yes, I'm aware that other phones already do this, and I don't imagine that Apple will have "invented" same, for any lunatics closely monitoring the discussion for thought crime.
LockInfo 2.0 is quite nice. Some of the settings are a bit too complex for the average user, but it?s a jailbroken app. The setup is well thought out. I?m giving the 14-day trial a go while expecting Apple?s take on it come Wednesday.
The only poor bit of the app is additional plug-ins, like weather and Twitter, while free, require too much rigamarole as the settings access Cydia which then requires you to install and then relaunch the Springboard. I understand it?s not their fault but I stopped at two plug-ins for LockInfo because of it. The Weather plug-in will connect to more iPhone weather apps than I knew existed. Impressive in its own right.
edit: I just noticed you can put the temperature in the Status Bar at the top. That is good enough for me. I personally don?t care about the weather a week in advance. I can?t do anything about it and the results won?t affect me one way or another. The other parts are just a joke.
Comments
I recently got to play with a Palm Pre at a concert I was at. The individual did international business and traveled a lot, which was part of his reasoning behind his purchase. Price being the other.
I was quite impressed. The GUI was real slick and intuitive, but what impressed me most was how it handled multiple applications ( not much different then exposé).
As far as the phone itself, it felt cheaper and clunky compared to the iPhone, and how anyone can type a message on those tiny keypads is still a mystery to me
The accuracy and response was not as sharp as the iPhone, and there was a slight delay in some cases, it felt as if it was a graphics problem more then the touchpad.
The screen was bright and the colours were vibrant, yet the overall appearance felt cramped because of the 'frame' they put around it. (Apple did it right by extending the the glass over the entire surface).... I don't understand people who put case's and covers on their iphones... changes the entire feel and user experience of the device.
Can't wait until Apple gives us multiple application ability. This summer?
A kid I know (he's 25) seemed to run through a new smartphone/app-phone every 6 months or so. Motorola Q, Palm Treo, iPhone, Palm Pre, etc.
He had an iPhone, but got the Pre the day they came out. He was so proud of it. It was so much nicer than his iPhone. When I played with his, it was nice, but not a game changer in my mind.
Amusingly, he gave up his Pre within the 30 day return period allowed by California. He just couldn't stand it after that long compared to the iPhone. When he lost his iPhone a few months ago, he replaced it with another. Speaks volumes to me.
Choice is good, though. I'm glad there's some decent competition to Apple now...we're sure to get more out of Apple in the way of hardware and software boosts with Android and HTC nipping at their heels so closely now then we would have otherwise.
As someone else pointed out, it looks like the person's finger was actually very jittery. Hardly a fair or reasonable test.
How do you account for the huge variances? The individual was doing his best to make straight lines. That's all. Let's assume he was doing his best to steady his finger. For each device he's got several chances. Why are nearly all the lines significantly wavy on one device while quite straight on another? Did he suddenly develop some sort of vertigo when testing the Droid? Did his finger move around wildly on each of those lines on the Droid yet remain quite steady when testing the iPhone?
Let's be reasonable here.
Watch the video.
Hmm, I've just tried that same test on my HTC Hero, and the lines are all smooth and straight, and right to the edge.
Was the HTC Hero included in this test? No.
How do you account for the huge variances? The individual was doing his best to make straight lines. That's all. Let's assume he was doing his best to steady his finger. For each device he's got several chances. Why are nearly all the lines significantly wavy on one device while quite straight on another? Did he suddenly develop some sort of vertigo when testing the Droid? Did his finger move around wildly on each of those lines on the Droid yet remain quite steady when testing the iPhone?
Let's be reasonable here.
Watch the video.
And the patterns the lesser phones were making are not easily created by a jittery hand. They are much too uniform.
On the flip side, I think that they should use a different method for testing. Specifically, get a stylus with different size points and a machine that will control the speed. This will make the test much more accurate and allow for more nuanced results.
I've advised a dozen or more friends to go to the iPhone the last couple of years. If I switch to Android and start recommending it over the iPhone, I am certain most of those friends will follow along.
Apple shouldn't ignore some of these issues much longer.
Having both used Droids and owning an iPhone, I can totally support this article. My mothers Droid's touchscreen was a pain to work with, nothing felt fluid or accurate, and fast motions never translated well.
I don't think it's just a hardware issue either, I've seen the same responsiveness issue on many android devices, though it's notably bad on the Droids I've used.
I once had a Dell Pocket PC that was more accurate than the android phones I've used, of course it didn't have to worry about multitouch.
Speaking of multitouch, interesting that this test shows accuracy & doesn't even get into how well the systems perform with multitouch tasks. That would be an interesting round 2.
I'm Apple all the way but to some people other functionality might be more important than precise touch 100% all of the time. i.e. multiple open apps, printing, blah blah blah.
Unless your doing a lot of text I don't see pin point accuracy being that important. Maybe if you want to quickly hide the boobs photo from your boss and accidentally load a shlong shot.
I think most of us would agree that accuracy is important. No background apps means more powerful apps. There are limited resources on the iPhone. If it could run background apps, no app could push the system because it would bog down. I think ease of suspending and resuming apps along with push notifications is good enough. Background apps also drain power. It is not a computer. It will work as a phone in the background. That is good enough. Maybe when we see 2 GHz+ phones, Apple could rethink this.
BTW, I don't know what you do with your phone... but with those closing remarks I wouldn't care about precise touch because I wouldn't want to touch that phone.
I think most of us would agree that accuracy is important. No background apps means more powerful apps. There are limited resources on the iPhone. If it could run background apps, no app could push the system because it would bog down. I think ease of suspending and resuming apps along with push notifications is good enough. Background apps also drain power. It is not a computer. It will work as a phone in the background. That is good enough. Maybe when we see 2 GHz+ phones, Apple could rethink this.
BTW, I don't know what you do with your phone... but with those closing remarks I wouldn't care about precise touch because I wouldn't want to touch that phone.
The Push Notifications are a brilliant idea and much better than running an app in the background that doesn?t need to be actively running, like streaming music. The beauty is that the developer uses the Apple created API to turn on this feature and controls which notification types the user can receive and which ones he can turn on and off.
I think background apps will come with v4.0. It will be in the next iPhone and I think turned on for the 3GS. From what I can see, the biggest limitation to the iPhone?s background capabilities is the amount of RAM, not the processing. The first two iPhones had 128MB RAM. The OS takes up about that without actually running any additional apps. You try to multi-task with the iPod app while using Safari with multiple pages and you get lag, potentially even some iPod audio playback issues. The 256MB in the 3GS made this much better and I am sure there is enough RAM for many if not most 3rd-party background apps.
I think the real question is: How will Apple implement background apps when the way you exit out of the device is to click the Home Button?
BTW, I don't know what you do with your phone... but with those closing remarks I wouldn't care about precise touch because I wouldn't want to touch that phone.
BTW, I don't know what you're thinking, but I wouldn't want you touching my phone. What a stupid comment. Mind your own business.
The Push Notifications are a brilliant idea and much better than running an app in the background that doesn’t need to be actively running, like streaming music. The beauty is that the developer uses the Apple created API to turn on this feature and controls which notification types the user can receive and which ones he can turn on and off.
I think background apps will come with v4.0. It will be in the next iPhone and I think turned on for the 3GS. From what I can see, the biggest limitation to the iPhone’s background capabilities is the amount of RAM, not the processing. The first two iPhones had 128MB RAM. The OS takes up about that without actually running any additional apps. You try to multi-task with the iPod app while using Safari with multiple pages and you get lag, potentially even some iPod audio playback issues. The 256MB in the 3GS made this much better and I am sure there is enough RAM for many if not most 3rd-party background apps.
I think the real question is: How will Apple implement background apps when the way you exit out of the device is to click the Home Button?
Push notifications are better than nothing yes. Nothing ground breaking though. All they do is inform you when you have mail. It's like a door with a door bell but has no door handle to open it. You STILL have to close the app and check your mail. NOW...if the push alert had a popup that showed you who the mail was from that would be a different story. "Oh ok, it's only Chang's House of Spaghetti. I'll keep on playing my video game or finish my journal". That's a feature that can make up for the lack of multitasking.
I'm not complaining because I accept that those features could be missing for a while plus the iPhone is still the best, but I do except these features to be available in 2010 for v 4.0. Three years is a LONG time. If all we get every iteration are camera MP and processor bumps it's not much. (Unless of course the processor gives us.....multitasking
Push notifications are great HOWEVER all they do is inform you when you have mail. You STILL have to close the app and check your mail. NOW...if the push alert had a popup that showed you who the mail was from that would be a different story. "Oh ok, it's only Chang's House of Spaghetti. I'll keep on playing my video game or finish my journal". That's a feature that can make up for the lack of multitasking.
That is not the Push Notification service I was referring to, but you do bring up a great point. The PN service I was referring was for 3rd-party devs and that does have a pop up that displays the info, like when you get an SMS.
Mail is the only app with a Push service through MobileMe or Exchange that only make a sound or vibration with no option to vary those settings or to have a popup display the name, subject and/or body of the message. I hope they include that because sometimes I do want my incoming mail to be a pop up. What would really be nice are Mail rules in v4.0. For instance, you can have anyone in your address book become a visual mail notification but not mail from others that may be spam.
The whole notification service is flawed. It was fine for v1.x but it wasn?t designed with a future-forward focus on usage. The touchscreen is accurate enough that we should be able to have access to your notifications from the Menu Bar or click the Home Button x-many times. I?d like to even see the ringer switch get an extra function as button, not just a toggle switch that could add optional features without marring the iPhone?s simple HW design.
Finally, the OS is robust enough that there should be an entire app dedicated to notifications. Right now notifications go away and you have to recall what app it was for. There is no running history with the various apps using the pop up notifications. Perhaps the right-swipe to get to the search page would be useful for that. Right now I find it fairly useless but do like the way the search itself works with the app icons showing up on the left column. I think that would be a great system search and notification history combination that you could toggle between.
That is not the Push Notification service I was referring to, but you do bring up a great point. The PN service I was referring was for 3rd-party devs and that does have a pop up that displays the info, like when you get an SMS.
SMS...there's another piece of doodoo. They don't even use SMS here in Japan so that wouldn't be very useful. Is SMS used outside of North America? You have instant email you don't need another messaging function unless it contains video (still waiting for my iPhone iChat app). To me SMS is like pagers from the 80's. Apparently North America is SMS hungry though. To be fair they do have a version of mail here called C-Mail which is SMS like. Limited to the carrier. No one uses it because it's very limited in character count, very ugly, archaic, no photos etc.
You're talking about push notifications within apps like eBuddy [great btw] right? Or how bout our absent iChat LOL
I'd imagine that it wouldn't be a notifications app but more of a settings/prefs panel. You could set the popup to be just a small red circle or a white balloon with the from and subject and even a voice alert. Complete with transparency and size options.
Come to think of it, there's no reason why the next iPhone couldn't be fully capable of doing iChat video. Don't suppose we'll see that for another 8 years.
SMS...there's another piece of doodoo. They don't even use SMS here in Japan so that wouldn't be very useful. Is SMS used outside of North America? You have instant email you don't need another messaging function unless it contains video (still waiting for my iPhone iChat app). To me SMS is like pagers from the 80's. Apparently North America is SMS hungry though. To be fair they do have a version of mail here called C-Mail which is SMS like. Limited to the carrier. No one uses it because it's very limited in character count, very ugly, archaic, no photos etc.
SMS is used in the US but I think it?s popular throughout most of the world, especially Europe. I don?t utilize it, but it works well for those who don?t have phones with rich email clients. The MMS part of SMS can due images, documents, audio and video so it does open itself up to more uses. SMS no longer has the 160 character limit these days, at least no on AT&T, and it works across all US carriers with accuracy.
You're talking about push notifications within apps like eBuddy [great btw] right
I don?t know about eBuddy, but Apple?s Push Notification that came to v3.0, though later than originally planned, works outside the 3rd-party apps. It allows developers to use an API that will tie a single process that does continually run in the background of your iPhone so that it can constantly await for new messages. This allows me to have my FaceBook, Twitter, IM client, etc. all running offline but still receiving messages as pop ups, with a sound and/or vibration with little overhead to resources or hit on the battery life. You can potentially have an infinite number of these apps running since all the heavy work is done off the device.Apple uses XMPP for their MobileMe mail which I think is completely different from their PSN. I have no idea how the ActiveSync to Exchange works.
Or how bout our absent iChat LOL
I don?t they?ll that to the iPhone. With the iPhone so popular in the world and Apple gaining nothing from an IM client this is better served by 3rd-parties. They?d have to support AIM, MSN, Yahoo, FaceBook and world of other clients that I can?t even recall right now. Personally, I don?t think they can outdo Beejive and I already hate that there are iPhone apps that I can?t remove because Apple won?t let me.
Come to think of it, there's no reason why the next iPhone couldn't be fully capable of doing iChat video. Don't suppose we'll see that for another 8 years.
Maybe they?ll add something like a 0.3Mpx camera to the device for video chatting. I suppose a novelty feature like that depends on several factors like how much are adding this time around (adding too much in one build could make the 2011 version seem lackluster in comparison), what the competition is doing, etc.
That is not the Push Notification service I was referring to, but you do bring up a great point. The PN service I was referring was for 3rd-party devs and that does have a pop up that displays the info, like when you get an SMS.
Mail is the only app with a Push service through MobileMe or Exchange that only make a sound or vibration with no option to vary those settings or to have a popup display the name, subject and/or body of the message. I hope they include that because sometimes I do want my incoming mail to be a pop up. What would really be nice are Mail rules in v4.0. For instance, you can have anyone in your address book become a visual mail notification but not mail from others that may be spam.
The whole notification service is flawed. It was fine for v1.x but it wasn’t designed with a future-forward focus on usage. The touchscreen is accurate enough that we should be able to have access to your notifications from the Menu Bar or click the Home Button x-many times. I’d like to even see the ringer switch get an extra function as button, not just a toggle switch that could add optional features without marring the iPhone’s simple HW design.
Finally, the OS is robust enough that there should be an entire app dedicated to notifications. Right now notifications go away and you have to recall what app it was for. There is no running history with the various apps using the pop up notifications. Perhaps the right-swipe to get to the search page would be useful for that. Right now I find it fairly useless but do like the way the search itself works with the app icons showing up on the left column. I think that would be a great system search and notification history combination that you could toggle between.
Up. It's always seemed to me to be a logical extension of the iPhone's UI to use Up, Down, and Left as specialty screens. Apple has already used Left for search, I would think that Up for a notifications screen would be ideal. You could leave it there, if you wanted, making it your home screen, and go down for apps.
With an entire screen to work with, Apple could give notifications the app treatment you're talking about, with ways to navigate to additional history pages or settings.
That doesn't entirely solve the problem of how you do in app notifications without being unduly intrusive, but at least you would know you could dismiss a pop-up until you were ready to deal with it and have somewhere to go with a persistent record of everything you hadn't acknowledged.
So what do you plan to tell them when they can't sync their Apps and playlists to a new phone?
Well you certainly missed my point and focused in on just one thing...
Short answer: the bulk of them aren't iTunes users to begin with, so that's not an issue. Really.
For me, and probably you, iTunes is a strong chain binding us to the iPod/iPhone ecosystem, but for people who aren't big music listeners, the killer app for the iPhone isn't really a killer at all.
As I do more reading, it seems there are solutions out there for Android users; even solutions that work with iTunes. Windows solutions seem more abundant (but isn't that always the case), but there's something called Songbird that supposedly works well, and I forget the name, but in another thread someone mentioned a Mac app that moved iTunes songs and playlists to any USB device, and for the Automator/AppleScript fans, there are even some tools already floating the Android Community Forums.
That wasn't my point at all, though. My point was that as strong as Apple's marketshare and mindshare has been, when they were pretty much the only game in town for the AppPhone market, that lead is starting to erode and Apple is going to have to give us a bit more than a slight speed bump or other minor upgrades. You may not feel the urge to leave, but there are plenty of posts from people frustrated with the iPhone universe that seem to be looking for an opportunity to jump ship once something good enough comes along, and the Droid/Eris/Nexus1 seem to be getting pretty close.
We'll see what Apple comes up with, and hopefully give a peek at in a couple of weeks.
Up. It's always seemed to me to be a logical extension of the iPhone's UI to use Up, Down, and Left as specialty screens. Apple has already used Left for search, I would think that Up for a notifications screen would be ideal. You could leave it there, if you wanted, making it your home screen, and go down for apps.
With an entire screen to work with, Apple could give notifications the app treatment you're talking about, with ways to navigate to additional history pages or settings.
Nice! Up does work better than my idea as you can access it from any Home Screen.
Nice! Up does work better than my idea as you can access it from any Home Screen.
Yeah, and Apple could address that complaints about that grid of apps starting to look "tired" by letting you have that notification screen serve as a home screen, plus things like weather widgets and the like. You could have the screen you glance at have a lot of useful, current into, with all your apps just a flick away.
And yes, I'm aware that other phones already do this, and I don't imagine that Apple will have "invented" same, for any lunatics closely monitoring the discussion for thought crime.
Yeah, and Apple could address that complaints about that grid of apps starting to look "tired" by letting you have that notification screen serve as a home screen, plus things like weather widgets and the like. You could have the screen you glance at have a lot of useful, current into, with all your apps just a flick away.
And yes, I'm aware that other phones already do this, and I don't imagine that Apple will have "invented" same, for any lunatics closely monitoring the discussion for thought crime.
LockInfo 2.0 is quite nice. Some of the settings are a bit too complex for the average user, but it?s a jailbroken app. The setup is well thought out. I?m giving the 14-day trial a go while expecting Apple?s take on it come Wednesday.
The only poor bit of the app is additional plug-ins, like weather and Twitter, while free, require too much rigamarole as the settings access Cydia which then requires you to install and then relaunch the Springboard. I understand it?s not their fault but I stopped at two plug-ins for LockInfo because of it. The Weather plug-in will connect to more iPhone weather apps than I knew existed. Impressive in its own right.edit: I just noticed you can put the temperature in the Status Bar at the top. That is good enough for me. I personally don?t care about the weather a week in advance. I can?t do anything about it and the results won?t affect me one way or another. The other parts are just a joke.