"On Android, when a user switches from one app to another, the background app is suspended. This is like going into a coma; it's still taking up memory (which is scarce) but can't respond to anything or continue work or begin any new tasks. If the system runs low on memory, it begins saving the state of suspended apps and terminating them."
Ok, this is why when I go on a jog and start my job tracker app, that it traces my whole route in Google maps while I am using other apps like music players and geo caching? Could you get anymore wrong on your assessment?
If you are going to publish about something you obviously know nothing about, at least preface it that you are "guessing" on how something works. And if you are quoting some other goon that is paid by Apple, let's preface with that as well.
I feel sorry for OS 4.0's implementation of multitasking. It isn't much better than what it was. Sure a few more items can be run through common services but anything off of predefined areas will only be able to "freeze" in the background. So much for the next best app that Job's hasn't thought of.
Why would you need CONTROL_ALT_DELETE on an Android phone?
Quitting background running applications is simply a matter of following the below steps:-
Settings -> Applications -> Manage applications -> (wait for list to load?) -> (select app) ->Force Stop
So easy and obvious, your Grandmother could probably do it.
/sarcasm
And this isn't better than the iPhone where you have to completely reboot it when something runs it a muck? And please don't tell me that it doesn't happen. Been there. Oh yeah, its the side of Apple's OS that nobody on a pro-Apple site talks about. Oh no, I better watch for a Job's induced lightning strike...
"On Android, when a user switches from one app to another, the background app is suspended. This is like going into a coma; it's still taking up memory (which is scarce) but can't respond to anything or continue work or begin any new tasks. If the system runs low on memory, it begins saving the state of suspended apps and terminating them."
Ok, this is why when I go on a jog and start my job tracker app, that it traces my whole route in Google maps while I am using other apps like music players and geo caching? Could you get anymore wrong on your assessment?
If you are going to publish about something you obviously know nothing about, at least preface it that you are "guessing" on how something works. And if you are quoting some other goon that is paid by Apple, let's preface with that as well.
If you read on further, the article states:
"In order to actually do things in the background, Android apps must supply a "service" component, which spins off tasks that can continue even when the associated app is suspended. An Android service uses a client/server model to perform background tasks such as music playback or polling a server for new messages."
Apps on Android are indeed suspended when they are switched away. For apps that want to continue to provide services, they must spawn a new faceless process, and presumably with lower resources, in order to provide those services.
Quote:
I feel sorry for OS 4.0's implementation of multitasking. It isn't much better than what it was. Sure a few more items can be run through common services but anything off of predefined areas will only be able to "freeze" in the background. So much for the next best app that Job's hasn't thought of.
It's not multitasking like on the desktop yes, but it provides use cases that haven't been there before. Probably 98% of the use cases nows. And provides it in a way where less things could go wrong so that task killers would be less needed.
Oh, man, this is just a bad article. Regret the time spent reading it.
If there is one part of the article I can't disagree more it is this sentence : "Apple ... own approach to multitasking that it believed to be better" Who believe this ? You ? Why ? Because Divine Steve at his speech said so ? Ridiculous. You threw no arguments to support this.
Let's get the facts straight :
1, Apple was late to the game, and it mostly copied the Android approach. They might call it differently, but the Apple's multitasking is not any advanced to the one in the Android.It is just copycat work not to be too far behind.
2, There is no client-server model in Android multitasking. It is not any more difficult to do efficient background tasks on Android than with iPhone OS 4. You just don't understand the idea, that's all.
3, Android still maintains the technological lead in the multitasking. There are some areas that weren't copied by Apple (yet), such as broadcasting the system-wide events (not the same as local notifications, although it might be extended this way in iPhone OS 5). This kind of background processing can actually help to save battery life (you do you background networking at the time some other process established - battery expensive - data connection, so you can post your tiny bit of data needed to send to remote server with almost no energy penalty. This is not copied to iPhone, i.e. iPhone is still technologically behind Android in the area of multitasking. This is reason you can't say iPhone is best multitasking mobile implementation, it is just a lie.
4, Apple was overtaken and still plays catchup game. By the time iPhone OS 4 gets to the real users, Android will probably have version 3 released (believed to be announced on Google IO in late May). The the gap, narrowed by iPhone OS 4 will widen again.
One quick question : are you actually paid by Apple to do this kind of marketing for them or goes this from your fanboy nature ?
You've just proven what a poor choice your AI handle was.
I thought it was a decent article. No earth shattering revelations but still informative.
One remarkable quote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Appleinsider
The Flash Professional strategy Adobe hoped to roll out will not offer its users the ability to support iPhone 4.0's multitasking features, Adobe would not be able to rapidly add these features as soon as Apple would like, nor would it necessarily even be in Adobe's interest to add them.
I don't think Apple would like anything of the sort -- Ever!
We all know that the ratings on manufacturers websites are nonsense though. Under normal use, I've seen laptops with "7 hour" batteries last barely over 90 minutes. In the real world, the only laptop manufacturer who is anywhere near honest is Apple.
And that's what matters - real world performance. My old Nokia E71 would last three days with push e-mail enabled and several 3rd party applications running in the background. My 3GS barely lasts a day with push e-mail enabled. That's despite the E71 only being rated at 10.5 and 4.5 hours of 2G/3G talktime on Nokia's website.
For testing notebooks, Apple and Sony use a realistic metric that results in users getting near or even exceeding the advertised time. This is well known in the tech world, even among people that hate Apple just to hate Apple.
For PMPs and cellphones it's much easier for companies to be honest about battery stats because they specifically test for a specific service. Unless you can show proof that Apple is lying I see no reason why that should be accepted when their history shows otherwise. Your anecdotal evidence doesn't mention any usage between phones. From my observation, the 3GS is much more useful than the E71 so it's easy to spend more time using apps or the web. Every battery test I've seen on the iPhone shows the iPhone besting other smartphones in all or nearly all tests. The only one that it has been consistently bested is a CDMA-based Blackberry when doing '3G' phone tests.
Here is a more recent comparison to the Nexus One...
Well, which is it...? Did Apple "copy" Android multi-tasking or is Android multi-tasking better? Apple's is different. So they didn't copy. Get real. Google had a spy on Apple's board and stole Apple's ideas for the iPhone and now they want to copy the iPad like all the other crappy non innovative companies out there. Does anyone really believe Android and the other also-rans would even EXIST if it weren't for Apple????
The first screen phone came from IBM. Wireless syncing and PIM functionality came from Xerox. The first commercially successful touch screen phone came from Handspring, which was bought by Palm. Some people from Palm went and founded Danger, where they created the first App Store. Then people left Danger and founded Android to create the next gen phone platform. Android got bought by Google before the iPhone was even released.
There is very little that's original about the iPhone: touch screen input, screen keyboards with correction, the app store, desktop syncing, wireless syncing, music transfer, touch games, online music store, etc.: it was all invented and commercialized elsewhere. Now Apple is copying Google Docs and other features like that.
iPad like devices, too, have been around for years. They were too expensive and the battery didn't last long enough. Now screens and batteries have caught up and people are releasing a new generation of tablets. There's nothing magical about it, and the only thing that makes Apple different is that they always release a few months earlier than everybody else... because they can charge a premium price.
The technology in the iPod, iPhone, and iPad has been liberally copied from other companies.
As for all the bruhaha over multitasking, there's not a shred of evidence that multitasking is a battery drain problem and that any of Apple's bizarre restrictions are necessary. Battery life on the iPhone is no better than on Android devices, and Android's battery meter doesn't show any significant batter usage from background tasks.
No, Apple likes to restrict multitasking because it gives them more control over apps, nothing more.
Apple makes nice (if expensive) products, and they do a good job on design and engineering. That should be enough for a company; you don't need to give them credit for things they didn't invent.
How is the iPhone OS way more power efficient? In this particular example, both phones are just polling the GPS. Please elaborate a bit more if you can.
Okay, here's what you would have gleaned if you read the whole article thoroughly:
For turn-by-turn type apps where the device is likely plugged into a car adaptor, the GPS is on all the time even if you place the turn-by-turn app in background. (Answering the phone, changing your Pandora station, etc.)
For the other type, GPS is not polling all the time when the app is in background. Polling occurs only when cell tower triangulation, which iPhone does continuously anyway, indicates that the iPhone has moved 500 to 1K meters. I take it that this is what Android doesn't have. Android is not that smart about it; if you multitask into GPS, it is constantly polling in background thus the much bigger drain on the battery. Let me lift from the article:
-------------
'On the other hand, social networking apps such as Loopt similarly need to know the user's location in order to be useful, but are not typically used in a car kit. If they used GPS, they'd nail the iPhone's battery pretty rapidly just to offer a lightweight service of limited value. In order to support these types of services efficiently, Background Location supplies them with data the phone already gets on a regular basis every time the user moves between mobile cell towers.
This update happens when the user moves between 500 and 1000 meters. When a location change is noted, the system wakes the app, updates its location, provides it with a period of time to process the change, and then suspends it again. This gets around the battery taxing use of GPS while still allowing these types of apps to work without constantly being in the foreground (as is currently the case on the iPhone).'
--------------
So that's my best understanding of it. I don't claim to be an expert. Hope that helped.
The first screen phone came from IBM. Wireless syncing and PIM functionality came from Xerox. The first commercially successful touch screen phone came from Handspring, which was bought by Palm. Some people from Palm went and founded Danger, where they created the first App Store. Then people left Danger and founded Android to create the next gen phone platform. Android got bought by Google before the iPhone was even released.
There is very little that's original about the iPhone: touch screen input, screen keyboards with correction, the app store, desktop syncing, wireless syncing, music transfer, touch games, online music store, etc.: it was all invented and commercialized elsewhere. Now Apple is copying Google Docs and other features like that.
iPad like devices, too, have been around for years. They were too expensive and the battery didn't last long enough. Now screens and batteries have caught up and people are releasing a new generation of tablets. There's nothing magical about it, and the only thing that makes Apple different is that they always release a few months earlier than everybody else... because they can charge a premium price.
The technology in the iPod, iPhone, and iPad has been liberally copied from other companies.
As for all the bruhaha over multitasking, there's not a shred of evidence that multitasking is a battery drain problem and that any of Apple's bizarre restrictions are necessary. Battery life on the iPhone is no better than on Android devices, and Android's battery meter doesn't show any significant batter usage from background tasks.
No, Apple likes to restrict multitasking because it gives them more control over apps, nothing more.
Apple makes nice (if expensive) products, and they do a good job on design and engineering. That should be enough for a company; you don't need to give them credit for things they didn't invent.
of course apple is never the very first one to use a given technology. it would be silly of them to release something just to be first, which is what a lot of their gimmick-oriented competitors do. when they do something they do it right, in a creative and innovative way, and that's why they deserve credit where other's don't.
"Apple's strategy was delivered later than expected as it realized what a huge undertaking this would be, but the resulting Push Notification service enabled iPhone apps to seem responsive to external updates without actually running in the background, constantly polling servers for updates."
Even when running Apple's mail and push notification servers (Mac OS X Server), push notification doesn't work to the iPhone.
Supposedly push works with Gmail and MobileMe, but I'm not about to entrust those companies with the content of my private communications.
"Apple's strategy was delivered later than expected as it realized what a huge undertaking this would be, but the resulting Push Notification service enabled iPhone apps to seem responsive to external updates without actually running in the background, constantly polling servers for updates."
Even when running Apple's mail and push notification servers (Mac OS X Server), push notification doesn't work to the iPhone.
Supposedly push works with Gmail and MobileMe, but I'm not about to entrust those companies with the content of my private communications.
Push works great for Mobileme email. Gmail doesn't support it.
Supposedly push works with Gmail and MobileMe, but I'm not about to entrust those companies with the content of my private communications.
Can you explain that more. It sounds like you're okay with them hosting your email but you draw the line with a service on your phone that listens for new messages instead of polling the server manually or after a set duration. I don't get it.
Oh, man, this is just a bad article. Regret the time spent reading it.
If there is one part of the article I can't disagree more it is this sentence : "Apple ... own approach to multitasking that it believed to be better" Who believe this ? You ? Why ? Because Divine Steve at his speech said so ? Ridiculous. You threw no arguments to support this.
Let's get the facts straight :
1, Apple was late to the game, and it mostly copied the Android approach. They might call it differently, but the Apple's multitasking is not any advanced to the one in the Android.It is just copycat work not to be too far behind.
2, There is no client-server model in Android multitasking. It is not any more difficult to do efficient background tasks on Android than with iPhone OS 4. You just don't understand the idea, that's all.
3, Android still maintains the technological lead in the multitasking. There are some areas that weren't copied by Apple (yet), such as broadcasting the system-wide events (not the same as local notifications, although it might be extended this way in iPhone OS 5). This kind of background processing can actually help to save battery life (you do you background networking at the time some other process established - battery expensive - data connection, so you can post your tiny bit of data needed to send to remote server with almost no energy penalty. This is not copied to iPhone, i.e. iPhone is still technologically behind Android in the area of multitasking. This is reason you can't say iPhone is best multitasking mobile implementation, it is just a lie.
4, Apple was overtaken and still plays catchup game. By the time iPhone OS 4 gets to the real users, Android will probably have version 3 released (believed to be announced on Google IO in late May). The the gap, narrowed by iPhone OS 4 will widen again.
One quick question : are you actually paid by Apple to do this kind of marketing for them or goes this from your fanboy nature ?
As much as I want to describe this person in few choice words, I found even worse the number of people. who have made a comment ever though people before them have already said the same thing. A pack of wolves for easy prey
Unless you can show proof that Apple is lying I see no reason why that should be accepted when their history shows otherwise.
They're not lying. I don't doubt that their battery figures are correct for individual tasks. However, they're not a good guide to real world performance.
They're not lying. I don't doubt that their battery figures are correct for individual tasks. However, they're not a good guide to real world performance.
I don't see a problem if the specs they claim for the specific tasks are correct. It sounds like your saying that the iPhone is more usable than other phones which therefore drains the battery faster. That doesn't sound like a bad place to be for Apple.
More duration would greatly be appreciated but I haven't seen a single comparison to show that the iPhone's battery is considerably worse than other phones, and often better.
Do you have a better suggestion for a more realistic world scenario that all cellular vendors could use? I certainly can't think of one. I think stats of each task running independently are the best metric for which the user can determine how this would affect their usage.
Personally, I am heavy on web-based apps and web-browsing on 3G with the iPod app in use in the background. That is 5 hours on the iPhone just for internet so it's no wonder I opted for the Mophie Juice Pack Air. That give me a full day of heavy internet usage on my iPhone.
This is from the 3G, but you can see the iPhone not only holds its own but best s everything but CDMA Blackberrys when doing 3G tests, which is expected.
Can you explain that more. It sounds like you're okay with them hosting your email but you draw the line with a service on your phone that listens for new messages instead of polling the server manually or after a set duration. I don't get it.
No, I'm not okay with Apple (or Google or Yahoo!) hosting my e-mail. My e-mail is hosted on private servers, using Mac OS X Server, which features (Dovecot) IMAP and Push Notification services... none of which push to iPhone.
Round about iPhone OS 3.1.3, Apple removed the 5 minute polling period. Now the minimum is 15 minutes.
IMHO it's a travesty to not get push e-mail when buying that far into Apple's ecosystem.
in a few months iPhone 4.0 will be deployed, as well as the latest version of Android. then we can all see how each performs regarding battery life and usability. right now, we're guessing.
it's not a surprise Android works great with all the widely-used Google cloud services, just as iPhone works great with the fewer but very nice Apple MobileMe services. if Apple wants to really compete here, tho, it will need to stop charging Apple product owners an annual fee for MobileMe.
of course apple is never the very first one to use a given technology. it would be silly of them to release something just to be first, which is what a lot of their gimmick-oriented competitors do. when they do something they do it right, in a creative and innovative way, and that's why they deserve credit where other's don't.
OK, so you basically agree then: nobody has copied Apple, but Apple copied lots of other technologies and phones. And Apple didn't introduce any innovative technologies with the iPhone. And I expect that in another few years, Apple will copy other technologies from Android and Nokia. But if you want to have an innovative phone (as opposed to a pretty one), don't get an iPhone. If you want a mainstream smartphone that looks nice and is fairly easy to use, get an iPhone. But don't complain if other companies start selling simplified smartphones as well; taking away features is not innovation.
Comments
Ok, this is why when I go on a jog and start my job tracker app, that it traces my whole route in Google maps while I am using other apps like music players and geo caching? Could you get anymore wrong on your assessment?
If you are going to publish about something you obviously know nothing about, at least preface it that you are "guessing" on how something works. And if you are quoting some other goon that is paid by Apple, let's preface with that as well.
I feel sorry for OS 4.0's implementation of multitasking. It isn't much better than what it was. Sure a few more items can be run through common services but anything off of predefined areas will only be able to "freeze" in the background. So much for the next best app that Job's hasn't thought of.
Why would you need CONTROL_ALT_DELETE on an Android phone?
Quitting background running applications is simply a matter of following the below steps:-
Settings -> Applications -> Manage applications -> (wait for list to load?) -> (select app) ->Force Stop
So easy and obvious, your Grandmother could probably do it.
/sarcasm
And this isn't better than the iPhone where you have to completely reboot it when something runs it a muck? And please don't tell me that it doesn't happen. Been there. Oh yeah, its the side of Apple's OS that nobody on a pro-Apple site talks about. Oh no, I better watch for a Job's induced lightning strike...
From reading this it does seem to me that Apple got its mobile OS right when it comes to multi-tasking.
"On Android, when a user switches from one app to another, the background app is suspended. This is like going into a coma; it's still taking up memory (which is scarce) but can't respond to anything or continue work or begin any new tasks. If the system runs low on memory, it begins saving the state of suspended apps and terminating them."
Ok, this is why when I go on a jog and start my job tracker app, that it traces my whole route in Google maps while I am using other apps like music players and geo caching? Could you get anymore wrong on your assessment?
If you are going to publish about something you obviously know nothing about, at least preface it that you are "guessing" on how something works. And if you are quoting some other goon that is paid by Apple, let's preface with that as well.
If you read on further, the article states:
"In order to actually do things in the background, Android apps must supply a "service" component, which spins off tasks that can continue even when the associated app is suspended. An Android service uses a client/server model to perform background tasks such as music playback or polling a server for new messages."
Apps on Android are indeed suspended when they are switched away. For apps that want to continue to provide services, they must spawn a new faceless process, and presumably with lower resources, in order to provide those services.
I feel sorry for OS 4.0's implementation of multitasking. It isn't much better than what it was. Sure a few more items can be run through common services but anything off of predefined areas will only be able to "freeze" in the background. So much for the next best app that Job's hasn't thought of.
It's not multitasking like on the desktop yes, but it provides use cases that haven't been there before. Probably 98% of the use cases nows. And provides it in a way where less things could go wrong so that task killers would be less needed.
Oh, man, this is just a bad article. Regret the time spent reading it.
If there is one part of the article I can't disagree more it is this sentence : "Apple ... own approach to multitasking that it believed to be better" Who believe this ? You ? Why ? Because Divine Steve at his speech said so ? Ridiculous. You threw no arguments to support this.
Let's get the facts straight :
1, Apple was late to the game, and it mostly copied the Android approach. They might call it differently, but the Apple's multitasking is not any advanced to the one in the Android.It is just copycat work not to be too far behind.
2, There is no client-server model in Android multitasking. It is not any more difficult to do efficient background tasks on Android than with iPhone OS 4. You just don't understand the idea, that's all.
3, Android still maintains the technological lead in the multitasking. There are some areas that weren't copied by Apple (yet), such as broadcasting the system-wide events (not the same as local notifications, although it might be extended this way in iPhone OS 5). This kind of background processing can actually help to save battery life (you do you background networking at the time some other process established - battery expensive - data connection, so you can post your tiny bit of data needed to send to remote server with almost no energy penalty. This is not copied to iPhone, i.e. iPhone is still technologically behind Android in the area of multitasking. This is reason you can't say iPhone is best multitasking mobile implementation, it is just a lie.
4, Apple was overtaken and still plays catchup game. By the time iPhone OS 4 gets to the real users, Android will probably have version 3 released (believed to be announced on Google IO in late May). The the gap, narrowed by iPhone OS 4 will widen again.
One quick question : are you actually paid by Apple to do this kind of marketing for them or goes this from your fanboy nature ?
You've just proven what a poor choice your AI handle was.
One remarkable quote:
The Flash Professional strategy Adobe hoped to roll out will not offer its users the ability to support iPhone 4.0's multitasking features, Adobe would not be able to rapidly add these features as soon as Apple would like, nor would it necessarily even be in Adobe's interest to add them.
I don't think Apple would like anything of the sort -- Ever!
We all know that the ratings on manufacturers websites are nonsense though. Under normal use, I've seen laptops with "7 hour" batteries last barely over 90 minutes. In the real world, the only laptop manufacturer who is anywhere near honest is Apple.
And that's what matters - real world performance. My old Nokia E71 would last three days with push e-mail enabled and several 3rd party applications running in the background. My 3GS barely lasts a day with push e-mail enabled. That's despite the E71 only being rated at 10.5 and 4.5 hours of 2G/3G talktime on Nokia's website.
For testing notebooks, Apple and Sony use a realistic metric that results in users getting near or even exceeding the advertised time. This is well known in the tech world, even among people that hate Apple just to hate Apple.
For PMPs and cellphones it's much easier for companies to be honest about battery stats because they specifically test for a specific service. Unless you can show proof that Apple is lying I see no reason why that should be accepted when their history shows otherwise. Your anecdotal evidence doesn't mention any usage between phones. From my observation, the 3GS is much more useful than the E71 so it's easy to spend more time using apps or the web. Every battery test I've seen on the iPhone shows the iPhone besting other smartphones in all or nearly all tests. The only one that it has been consistently bested is a CDMA-based Blackberry when doing '3G' phone tests.
Here is a more recent comparison to the Nexus One...
Well, which is it...? Did Apple "copy" Android multi-tasking or is Android multi-tasking better? Apple's is different. So they didn't copy. Get real. Google had a spy on Apple's board and stole Apple's ideas for the iPhone and now they want to copy the iPad like all the other crappy non innovative companies out there. Does anyone really believe Android and the other also-rans would even EXIST if it weren't for Apple????
The first screen phone came from IBM. Wireless syncing and PIM functionality came from Xerox. The first commercially successful touch screen phone came from Handspring, which was bought by Palm. Some people from Palm went and founded Danger, where they created the first App Store. Then people left Danger and founded Android to create the next gen phone platform. Android got bought by Google before the iPhone was even released.
There is very little that's original about the iPhone: touch screen input, screen keyboards with correction, the app store, desktop syncing, wireless syncing, music transfer, touch games, online music store, etc.: it was all invented and commercialized elsewhere. Now Apple is copying Google Docs and other features like that.
iPad like devices, too, have been around for years. They were too expensive and the battery didn't last long enough. Now screens and batteries have caught up and people are releasing a new generation of tablets. There's nothing magical about it, and the only thing that makes Apple different is that they always release a few months earlier than everybody else... because they can charge a premium price.
The technology in the iPod, iPhone, and iPad has been liberally copied from other companies.
As for all the bruhaha over multitasking, there's not a shred of evidence that multitasking is a battery drain problem and that any of Apple's bizarre restrictions are necessary. Battery life on the iPhone is no better than on Android devices, and Android's battery meter doesn't show any significant batter usage from background tasks.
No, Apple likes to restrict multitasking because it gives them more control over apps, nothing more.
Apple makes nice (if expensive) products, and they do a good job on design and engineering. That should be enough for a company; you don't need to give them credit for things they didn't invent.
How is the iPhone OS way more power efficient? In this particular example, both phones are just polling the GPS. Please elaborate a bit more if you can.
Okay, here's what you would have gleaned if you read the whole article thoroughly:
For turn-by-turn type apps where the device is likely plugged into a car adaptor, the GPS is on all the time even if you place the turn-by-turn app in background. (Answering the phone, changing your Pandora station, etc.)
For the other type, GPS is not polling all the time when the app is in background. Polling occurs only when cell tower triangulation, which iPhone does continuously anyway, indicates that the iPhone has moved 500 to 1K meters. I take it that this is what Android doesn't have. Android is not that smart about it; if you multitask into GPS, it is constantly polling in background thus the much bigger drain on the battery. Let me lift from the article:
-------------
'On the other hand, social networking apps such as Loopt similarly need to know the user's location in order to be useful, but are not typically used in a car kit. If they used GPS, they'd nail the iPhone's battery pretty rapidly just to offer a lightweight service of limited value. In order to support these types of services efficiently, Background Location supplies them with data the phone already gets on a regular basis every time the user moves between mobile cell towers.
This update happens when the user moves between 500 and 1000 meters. When a location change is noted, the system wakes the app, updates its location, provides it with a period of time to process the change, and then suspends it again. This gets around the battery taxing use of GPS while still allowing these types of apps to work without constantly being in the foreground (as is currently the case on the iPhone).'
--------------
So that's my best understanding of it. I don't claim to be an expert. Hope that helped.
The first screen phone came from IBM. Wireless syncing and PIM functionality came from Xerox. The first commercially successful touch screen phone came from Handspring, which was bought by Palm. Some people from Palm went and founded Danger, where they created the first App Store. Then people left Danger and founded Android to create the next gen phone platform. Android got bought by Google before the iPhone was even released.
There is very little that's original about the iPhone: touch screen input, screen keyboards with correction, the app store, desktop syncing, wireless syncing, music transfer, touch games, online music store, etc.: it was all invented and commercialized elsewhere. Now Apple is copying Google Docs and other features like that.
iPad like devices, too, have been around for years. They were too expensive and the battery didn't last long enough. Now screens and batteries have caught up and people are releasing a new generation of tablets. There's nothing magical about it, and the only thing that makes Apple different is that they always release a few months earlier than everybody else... because they can charge a premium price.
The technology in the iPod, iPhone, and iPad has been liberally copied from other companies.
As for all the bruhaha over multitasking, there's not a shred of evidence that multitasking is a battery drain problem and that any of Apple's bizarre restrictions are necessary. Battery life on the iPhone is no better than on Android devices, and Android's battery meter doesn't show any significant batter usage from background tasks.
No, Apple likes to restrict multitasking because it gives them more control over apps, nothing more.
Apple makes nice (if expensive) products, and they do a good job on design and engineering. That should be enough for a company; you don't need to give them credit for things they didn't invent.
of course apple is never the very first one to use a given technology. it would be silly of them to release something just to be first, which is what a lot of their gimmick-oriented competitors do. when they do something they do it right, in a creative and innovative way, and that's why they deserve credit where other's don't.
Even when running Apple's mail and push notification servers (Mac OS X Server), push notification doesn't work to the iPhone.
Supposedly push works with Gmail and MobileMe, but I'm not about to entrust those companies with the content of my private communications.
"Apple's strategy was delivered later than expected as it realized what a huge undertaking this would be, but the resulting Push Notification service enabled iPhone apps to seem responsive to external updates without actually running in the background, constantly polling servers for updates."
Even when running Apple's mail and push notification servers (Mac OS X Server), push notification doesn't work to the iPhone.
Supposedly push works with Gmail and MobileMe, but I'm not about to entrust those companies with the content of my private communications.
Push works great for Mobileme email. Gmail doesn't support it.
Supposedly push works with Gmail and MobileMe, but I'm not about to entrust those companies with the content of my private communications.
Can you explain that more. It sounds like you're okay with them hosting your email but you draw the line with a service on your phone that listens for new messages instead of polling the server manually or after a set duration. I don't get it.
Oh, man, this is just a bad article. Regret the time spent reading it.
If there is one part of the article I can't disagree more it is this sentence : "Apple ... own approach to multitasking that it believed to be better" Who believe this ? You ? Why ? Because Divine Steve at his speech said so ? Ridiculous. You threw no arguments to support this.
Let's get the facts straight :
1, Apple was late to the game, and it mostly copied the Android approach. They might call it differently, but the Apple's multitasking is not any advanced to the one in the Android.It is just copycat work not to be too far behind.
2, There is no client-server model in Android multitasking. It is not any more difficult to do efficient background tasks on Android than with iPhone OS 4. You just don't understand the idea, that's all.
3, Android still maintains the technological lead in the multitasking. There are some areas that weren't copied by Apple (yet), such as broadcasting the system-wide events (not the same as local notifications, although it might be extended this way in iPhone OS 5). This kind of background processing can actually help to save battery life (you do you background networking at the time some other process established - battery expensive - data connection, so you can post your tiny bit of data needed to send to remote server with almost no energy penalty. This is not copied to iPhone, i.e. iPhone is still technologically behind Android in the area of multitasking. This is reason you can't say iPhone is best multitasking mobile implementation, it is just a lie.
4, Apple was overtaken and still plays catchup game. By the time iPhone OS 4 gets to the real users, Android will probably have version 3 released (believed to be announced on Google IO in late May). The the gap, narrowed by iPhone OS 4 will widen again.
One quick question : are you actually paid by Apple to do this kind of marketing for them or goes this from your fanboy nature ?
As much as I want to describe this person in few choice words, I found even worse the number of people. who have made a comment ever though people before them have already said the same thing. A pack of wolves for easy prey
Unless you can show proof that Apple is lying I see no reason why that should be accepted when their history shows otherwise.
They're not lying. I don't doubt that their battery figures are correct for individual tasks. However, they're not a good guide to real world performance.
They're not lying. I don't doubt that their battery figures are correct for individual tasks. However, they're not a good guide to real world performance.
I don't see a problem if the specs they claim for the specific tasks are correct. It sounds like your saying that the iPhone is more usable than other phones which therefore drains the battery faster. That doesn't sound like a bad place to be for Apple.
More duration would greatly be appreciated but I haven't seen a single comparison to show that the iPhone's battery is considerably worse than other phones, and often better.
Do you have a better suggestion for a more realistic world scenario that all cellular vendors could use? I certainly can't think of one. I think stats of each task running independently are the best metric for which the user can determine how this would affect their usage.
Personally, I am heavy on web-based apps and web-browsing on 3G with the iPod app in use in the background. That is 5 hours on the iPhone just for internet so it's no wonder I opted for the Mophie Juice Pack Air. That give me a full day of heavy internet usage on my iPhone.
This is from the 3G, but you can see the iPhone not only holds its own but best s everything but CDMA Blackberrys when doing 3G tests, which is expected.
Can you explain that more. It sounds like you're okay with them hosting your email but you draw the line with a service on your phone that listens for new messages instead of polling the server manually or after a set duration. I don't get it.
No, I'm not okay with Apple (or Google or Yahoo!) hosting my e-mail. My e-mail is hosted on private servers, using Mac OS X Server, which features (Dovecot) IMAP and Push Notification services... none of which push to iPhone.
Round about iPhone OS 3.1.3, Apple removed the 5 minute polling period. Now the minimum is 15 minutes.
IMHO it's a travesty to not get push e-mail when buying that far into Apple's ecosystem.
it's not a surprise Android works great with all the widely-used Google cloud services, just as iPhone works great with the fewer but very nice Apple MobileMe services. if Apple wants to really compete here, tho, it will need to stop charging Apple product owners an annual fee for MobileMe.
of course apple is never the very first one to use a given technology. it would be silly of them to release something just to be first, which is what a lot of their gimmick-oriented competitors do. when they do something they do it right, in a creative and innovative way, and that's why they deserve credit where other's don't.
OK, so you basically agree then: nobody has copied Apple, but Apple copied lots of other technologies and phones. And Apple didn't introduce any innovative technologies with the iPhone. And I expect that in another few years, Apple will copy other technologies from Android and Nokia. But if you want to have an innovative phone (as opposed to a pretty one), don't get an iPhone. If you want a mainstream smartphone that looks nice and is fairly easy to use, get an iPhone. But don't complain if other companies start selling simplified smartphones as well; taking away features is not innovation.