that's where the market is going and even on iOS there is some fragmentation. there are separate OS files you download for each device supported with different drivers and feature sets in them
Not following you. Are you saying that the trivial differences among a few models and generations of iOS devices is somehow equivalent to MS maintaining two entirely separate mobile operating systems?
Quote:
apple spearheaded the way with the iphone and ipad but as the products mature people will want more features in their apps and most of the apps now are nothing more than browser bookmarks or lite versions of desktop apps. which is why they are so cheap. people will demand the products mature.
just like PC's. in 1980 they barely did anything. then came office apps and photoshop and Mac desktop publishing. every year the software matured to where you could run more tasks on it that were previously only possible on mainframes
as things matured we went from command line, to simple GUI overlays, to real GUI and file management and other things. expect the same cycle to be repeated in the mobile space
Seems to me that it's Apple that's in the driver's seat when it comes to fully featured touch based mobile devices.
In iOS they have a substantial subset of OS X running with arguably the best of class touch UI, now several generations old and rapidly maturing.
MS has the well reviewed but generally regarded to be somewhat underpowered (in the manner of first generation software) Windows Mobile 7, and at some point an as yet unknown version of Windows running on ARM hardware.
Apple has already done the work of turning their desktop OS into a lean, touch friendly mobile OS, and extending its capabilities as hardware becomes more capable is just a matter of adding additional interface elements, if necessary. The code to do the heavy lifting is already there.
Jamming a non-backwards compatible Windows onto ARM architecture with the same old funky "touch" capacities that never caught on over the last 10 years isn't bringing new levels of sophistication or capability to the market, it's just reiterating the failed Windows Tablet strategy on less power hungry chips. I suspect that battery life wasn't the only thing keeping these devices from selling in any great numbers.
Jamming a non-backwards compatible Windows onto ARM architecture with the same old funky "touch" capacities that never caught on over the last 10 years isn't bringing new levels of sophistication or capability to the market, it's just reiterating the failed Windows Tablet strategy on less power hungry chips. I suspect that battery life wasn't the only thing keeping these devices from selling in any great numbers.
I don?t see Windows 8 on ARM as MS trying to push a desktop version of Windows onto tablets and other mobile handhelds. I see it as MS realizing that ARM will be progressing into and beyond performance areas that Atom is current in, where Windows does run. IOW, I see MS seeing a future market for inexpensive and low power desktops, notebooks, servers, and commercial machines that run a desktop versions of Windows. I think this is smart.
For tablets I would expect MS to have WP7 for tablets by next CES, if not earlier. The only dumb move I think MS has made this past year is pushing WP7 for smartphones which are now fairly saturated and ignoring the brand new tablet market running optimized mobile OSes. I think MS could have taken a pretty good chunk of that marketshare this year and held onto it with the iPad having no contender until HP-WebOS, Android 3.0 and PlayBook start gauchely hitting shelves this Summer or later.
What an "invention"; taking the concept of something already done and doing it in software.
AFAIK, virtually everything a computer does in some way emulates "something already done", from word processing to email to video editing to photo editing. All UIs make heavy use of recognizable "real word" processes, from button pushing to dragging to moving pointers to opening folders.
All unpatentable? On account of the "prior art" of the physical world?
AFAIK, virtually everything a computer does in some way emulates "something already done", from word processing to email to video editing to photo editing. All UIs make heavy use of recognizable "real word" processes, from button pushing to dragging to moving pointers to opening folders.
All unpatentable? On account of the "prior art" of the physical world?
It?s beyond my ken but I have read quite a bit about CocoaTouch being tied to the underlying OS in ways that allow it to be smoother and more efficient and how Android and other mobile OSes are slow and require better HW to do the same basic task because the UI?s are so poorly designed and integrated. I?m sure someone will be along to expound or correct everything I just wrote but it seems to me that if even a part of that is true then that is IP worth protecting.
It?s beyond my ken but I have read quite a bit about CocoaTouch being tied to the underlying OS in ways that allow it to be smoother and more efficient and how Android and other mobile OSes are slow and require better HW to do the same basic task because the UI?s are so poorly designed and integrated. I?m sure someone will be along to expound or correct everything I just wrote but it seems to me that if even a part of that is true then that is IP worth protecting.
It's because CocoaTouch uses the GPU to render the UI, where its supposed to render things more efficiently, because the GPU is designed for graphics. Android and the rest use the CPU to render graphics in addition to running the system.
Secondly, who thinks WIndows on ARM is a good idea? Software will have to be re-written to get onto ARM, and you might as well start designing a new interface if that's the case. There's no point for Windows 8 to be on ARM if there's zero third-party software out there that runs on it currently.
So you?re saying they are lying because they eventually showed up? Need I remind you that Apple created a mobile OS from the ground up and that hadn?t had any experience with a smartphone OS whereas MS had WinCE with cut/copy/paste for many, many years. The fact that MS is doing "exactly what Apple did 4 years ago? and is being able to step in their footprints faster than Apple was able to make them is only proof that Apple is leading the pack. Even now after 2 major version of iOS with cut/copy/paste no other modern mobile OS has implemented a systemwide cut/copy/paste that is even close to as good as Apple?s implementation. That?s fact.
I'm talking about what they have claimed isn't possible and what was missing for the first two hardware cycles. No MMS for first gen iPhone because it can't do it? Lie 3G isn't a good experience with a picture on the springboard background? Lie Had one on my 3G the first day I could jailbreak it. Worked just fine up until I wiped it and sold it. Apple says that Game Center isn't supported on the 3G. Why? Because they can sell more hardware that way, not because it isn't capable. Forget all that did you? Jailbreakers were doing all of that, and much much more long before Apple said it couldn't be done on the first iPhone and the 3G. How did Apple introduce those new features? With shiny new hardware that somehow made it possible with the exact same hardware inside a different shaped case (iPhone to iPhone 3G).
C/C/P isn't as serious a deal to me, it wasn't a huge feature for me then and it's nice to have now. But it's nothing to flame WP7 about. At least they aren't taking two years to put it in there. It's amazing that Apple didn't have this much much sooner though, given all the complaining people were doing. Same with MMS, same with making your own ringtones rather than buying them, same with sending an SMS to more than one person at a time, same with forwarding an SMS. They were very late with every basic feature with the excuse that it 'wasn't good enough for Apple' or 'we finally did it right' when in fact jailbreakers had it working long before Apple deemed it good enough, and it was indeed possible. They lead the pack in touchscreen phones, not phone features. They lied to sell more next gen handsets and drew out feature implementation to aid this. For cripes sake we still can't set any system sound other than a ringtone. That's total bs this day and age. That feature should have been there in 1.0! 4 major iOS releases and we just now get to change an SMS tone to ones that are about 15 seconds too long. That's really leading from the front. If Microsoft is stupid for not having c/c/p in WP7 version 1.0, then what is Apple for (finally) allowing you to set a text tone that's 14 seconds long? Geniuses? How about let me make a tone of something I want of my own liking without having to resort to a jailbreak? Is that so hard? Is that unApplefan of me?
I didn't mean to imply that Apple isn't doing a fantstic job on the mobile phone front, they are by a longshot. But to criticize WP7 for not having the basic features of a phone, c/c/p ,MMS, and so on is disingenuous at the least. Apple went two years without having these things and Microsoft started from scratch throwing out everything they had and are rapidly updating their feature set. Give them time, they'll come into their own. I don't understand why Apple wasn't drawn across the coals for missing something like MMS when the hardware was capable of it and other examples of why some things couldn't be done in a timely manner. Most of the features that they were missing for two years were on phones that didn't have a fancy touchscreen and were out long before the iPhone. 6 months is a lifetime in the mobile phone industry.
They weren't leading anything back then, they were way behind on every basic feature. I fail to see how 'stepping in Apples footsteps' equals trashing every single line of code from their previous mobile OS and starting anew. They are implementing the same features that were around when Apple started and pushing them out faster without lying about why it can't be done with what they have. Christ it's been not even six months since it was out and their updates are coming much quicker than Apple had done, and I'm not talking games and other apps just bare bones basics, and they aren't trying to get you to buy next gen hardware to get said features.
You can't rake one over the coals and not the other, it's not subjective. I love my iPhone 4, but I also know that Apple released a crap first gen phone feature wise and has steadily released new features to coincide with new hardware. Microsoft isn't doing that. That's fact.
Don't get me started with iOS's extremely stupid/infuriating and extremely broken notification system. They continue to cling to the worst notification system by far in the mobile space.
I'm talking about what they have claimed isn't possible and what was missing for the first two hardware cycles. No MMS for first gen iPhone because it can't do it? Lie 3G isn't a good experience with a picture on the springboard background? Lie Had one on my 3G the first day I could jailbreak it. Worked just fine up until I wiped it and sold it. Apple says that Game Center isn't supported on the 3G. Why? Because they can sell more hardware that way, not because it isn't capable. Forget all that did you? Jailbreakers were doing all of that, and much much more long before Apple said it couldn't be done on the first iPhone and the 3G. How did Apple introduce those new features? With shiny new hardware that somehow made it possible with the exact same hardware inside a different shaped case (iPhone to iPhone 3G).
C/C/P isn't as serious a deal to me, it wasn't a huge feature for me then and it's nice to have now. But it's nothing to flame WP7 about. At least they aren't taking two years to put it in there. It's amazing that Apple didn't have this much much sooner though, given all the complaining people were doing. Same with MMS, same with making your own ringtones rather than buying them, same with sending an SMS to more than one person at a time, same with forwarding an SMS. They were very late with every basic feature with the excuse that it 'wasn't good enough for Apple' or 'we finally did it right' when in fact jailbreakers had it working long before Apple deemed it good enough, and it was indeed possible. They lead the pack in touchscreen phones, not phone features.
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1) I don?t think they ever said a word why MMS wasn?t there. I have to assume it was something contractual with AT&T. If true, that sucks but they were also the carrier that allowed the iPhone to take root and make every other cellphone better for consumers because of it so any short-term quirky network reasons AT&T had I consider it the less of two evils. Or it could be that Apple just didn?t care. Meaning they focused on things that were more important to them, like building a new QuickTime framework, getting a mobile version of Safari that would be useful, etc.
2) The wallpapers you added to your iPhone 3G wasn?t the same that Apple has on theres. There is actually quite a bit going on there. Sure, they could have made it simple like the JB apps but this is Apple we?re talking about. They either do it the right way or not at all. Which of those apps are adding the drop shadows to the text and icons? The iPhone 3G with 128MB RAM was already hurting enough on 4.0 without adding to it.
3) Game Center isn?t on the 3G and FaceTime isn?t on the 3G or 3GS. Your expectations that every feature should be available is erroneous. Unless you have stats of how much RAM and stability data you can?t really say that they were wrong. Your assumption that it?s to sell new iPhones is also ignoring that you got an update at all. The Sony Xperia with Android 2.1 that came out 6 months ago in August is officially not getting an update. IOW, Apple has no requirement to have giving your 3G an update and based on how poorly 4.0 ran on many of them even with resource heavy features removed I say they should just reduce it to only the previous model if users are feeling an entitlement with a 3 generation old device.
4) As previous stated, MS isn?t having to figure out the logistics of cut/copy/paste the way Apple did. Those silly comments people made that it?s been around for decades and all you need are a clipboard are asinine. Even the first iOS App Store developer that created an app that allowed for it stated that Apple would have a much harder time of it since it would have to be universal to the OS, not something that could alter between apps. Again, Android still doesn?t have it figured out.
5) You?re again ignoring that MS had touch-based mobile OSes with cut/copy/paste for many, many years and now they release a new version without it and yet you aren?t saying MS held off on this feature so they can sell more WP7 licenses a year later. In fact, you?ve completely ignored MS coming in years later, covering no new ground, having this be an extension of WinCE at the foundation, but Apple starting from scratch was holding out the whole time. Do you realize how that makes you look?
6) Apple has never led any pack on having the most features. If you judge CE by the length of the spec sheet then no Apple product will ever be for you. I bet you are crying foul on Apple for talking up Safari on the iPhone and yet it?s still the best mobile browser I?ve used. Scrolling, tap to zoom, etc. But hey, phones had WAP browsers before the iPhone came along so they get no credit for releasing something that technically existed on some level.
I truncated your post there. I think a half-dozen body slams is enough.
PS: I?m a fan of WP7 and think MS is doing a great job with it, but your claims that Apple is lying with no proof to back it up and common sense refute your claims, well I just can?t let that slide.
Before anyone ever again complains about the general vibe of Apple product releases, they should be required to go here and look at the Samsung freakshow that got put on at CES (you have to scroll from the bottom up.
I'm speechless. This is even weirder and more off-putting than Microsoft's stabs at youth market cred. It's like a parody of a trade show circus from a David Lynch movie.
Also, before Samsung gets all up in our grill about their awesome smart TVs, they should maybe do something about the complete shit pile that is their current internet enabled TV UI. It's hideous, it looks like it was tossed together from random parts and graphics and it just barely passes muster because all it has to do is let you cursor around big panels and select them. If they think that shit will fly when you're trying to do Google TVish things they're looking at a complete non-starter.
Super skinny bezels and cable for your tablet are nice, though.
Before anyone ever again complains about the general vibe of Apple product releases, they should be required to go here and look at the Samsung freakshow that got put on at CES (you have to scroll from the bottom up.
That kid on stage gave me an idea to bring Mad Max: The Road Warrior to broadway.
For all you simple-minded people comparing Kinect sales to iPads, it's not units. It's never been units or market share with Apple. When will you people learn?
For all you simple-minded people comparing Kinect sales to iPads, it's not units. It's never been units or market share with Apple. When will you people learn?
Jamming a non-backwards compatible Windows onto ARM architecture with the same old funky "touch" capacities that never caught on over the last 10 years isn't bringing new levels of sophistication or capability to the market, it's just reiterating the failed Windows Tablet strategy on less power hungry chips.
It's hard to say what the hell Microsoft are thinking... maybe they don't even know themselves!
The keynote (Windows will be everywhere) makes it sound like they are going to spend the next 12-24 months porting Windows to ARM, then release the same old desktop-merged-with-mobile strategy they have been slugging away at for a decade.
It seems like they have no intention of releasing a purpose-built tablet OS. It almost sounded like they intend to push the Windows Core running on ARM down into the mobile segment currently filled by WP7.
However, then I hear that they are actually working on a totally separate "panel" (my guess: WP7 inspired) based touch shell UI for Windows 8.
The standard UI in Windows 7 is a totally pluggable component. The same core OS as Windows 7 on Windows Server 2008 R2 can run headless. So it's feasible to have the same core OS and separate user interfaces plugged on the front depending on the form factor. It could even switch between the two if you wanted to dock the tablet.
It was also leaked that they will be releasing an "App Store" in Windows 8 which will presumably cover tablets as well as the desktop.
With Silverlight coming to Xbox, as well as cable TV over IP in Australia and Microsoft's support of UltraViolet it seems like they are finally starting a push into the digital living room and they are using the Xbox to do it.
Maybe they decided that having three major platforms (WP7/Xbox/Windows) was unsustainable and they needed to consolidate before they could move forward. It's hard to say!
I still think they should have announced an Xbox branded tablet based on WP7/ARM. Probably Microsoft's biggest (only?) advantage over competitors at the moment in the mobile consumer space is gaming.
A tablet that people saw as being basically the same as the iPad... only with better games, would have sold. Maybe not enough to worry Apple at all, but it would have put Microsoft in the game until Windows 8 hit the market.
Not following you. Are you saying that the trivial differences among a few models and generations of iOS devices is somehow equivalent to MS maintaining two entirely separate mobile operating systems?
Seems to me that it's Apple that's in the driver's seat when it comes to fully featured touch based mobile devices.
In iOS they have a substantial subset of OS X running with arguably the best of class touch UI, now several generations old and rapidly maturing.
MS has the well reviewed but generally regarded to be somewhat underpowered (in the manner of first generation software) Windows Mobile 7, and at some point an as yet unknown version of Windows running on ARM hardware.
Apple has already done the work of turning their desktop OS into a lean, touch friendly mobile OS, and extending its capabilities as hardware becomes more capable is just a matter of adding additional interface elements, if necessary. The code to do the heavy lifting is already there.
Jamming a non-backwards compatible Windows onto ARM architecture with the same old funky "touch" capacities that never caught on over the last 10 years isn't bringing new levels of sophistication or capability to the market, it's just reiterating the failed Windows Tablet strategy on less power hungry chips. I suspect that battery life wasn't the only thing keeping these devices from selling in any great numbers.
i'm saying that as mobile devices mature MS doesn't have to follow the same path as Apple. they can just take the full Windows OS which starting with 7/2008 R2 is very modular and UNIX like and put it on a mobile device with minimal development effort. they already have experience with the x-box which uses a lot of code from the main Windows OS. starting back in 2002 MS has had a secret project to rewrite Windows almost from scratch and make it more modular.
same as Windows 95 and NT4. with the Pentium CPU Intel had a nice chip to run Windows and that's when it took off.
the A4 has around 260 million transistors. not sure if it includes the PowerVR. the new i core CPU's are at a billion and that includes the IGP.
Before anyone ever again complains about the general vibe of Apple product releases, they should be required to go here and look at the Samsung freakshow that got put on at CES (you have to scroll from the bottom up.
I'm speechless. This is even weirder and more off-putting than Microsoft's stabs at youth market cred. It's like a parody of a trade show circus from a David Lynch movie.
Also, before Samsung gets all up in our grill about their awesome smart TVs, they should maybe do something about the complete shit pile that is their current internet enabled TV UI. It's hideous, it looks like it was tossed together from random parts and graphics and it just barely passes muster because all it has to do is let you cursor around big panels and select them. If they think that shit will fly when you're trying to do Google TVish things they're looking at a complete non-starter.
Super skinny bezels and cable for your tablet are nice, though.
i hear the biggest complaint about the TV apps is they are slow. i played with the Yahoo apps on a 2010 LG LED TV and they are beyond slow. it's like watching trees grow. i was over at family over the new year and the LG TV software was upgraded from version 6 in the summer to version 8 something now. big difference and a lot better
if you read the engadget hands on reviews with the products most mention that they are a bit laggy. especially the Android stuff.
the A4 has around 260 million transistors. not sure if it includes the PowerVR. the new i core CPU's are at a billion and that includes the IGP.
I would assume that refers to the entire chip, not just the Cortex-A8 part of it.
I found one sight that references Tegra 2?s transistor count and the Cortex-A9.
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At 260M transistors, Tegra 2 is a fairly complex chip. The total die size is approximately 49mm^2, which actually sounds big given the target market. The A9s occupy around 10% of the total die area.
and that's with the 512MB of RAM. as the mobile OS's and apps mature expect RAM needs to grow. at some point someone will take the RAM of the SoC and start putting so-dimm's in mobile devices
just look at the last 5 years or so. 2006-2011 cell phones went from lite network usage of checking email, web access and light text based tasks like ebay or amazon searching. to 2011 when people expect to stream HD video over the cell network and get annoyed when a million people can't do it at once
I don?t see Windows 8 on ARM as MS trying to push a desktop version of Windows onto tablets and other mobile handhelds. I see it as MS realizing that ARM will be progressing into and beyond performance areas that Atom is current in, where Windows does run. IOW, I see MS seeing a future market for inexpensive and low power desktops, notebooks, servers, and commercial machines that run a desktop versions of Windows. I think this is smart.
For tablets I would expect MS to have WP7 for tablets by next CES, if not earlier. The only dumb move I think MS has made this past year is pushing WP7 for smartphones which are now fairly saturated and ignoring the brand new tablet market running optimized mobile OSes. I think MS could have taken a pretty good chunk of that marketshare this year and held onto it with the iPad having no contender until HP-WebOS, Android 3.0 and PlayBook start gauchely hitting shelves this Summer or later.
Time will tell but I think Win CE is toast.
MS probably do have other valid reasons for porting Windows to ARM, but now that they are doing that AND not releasing a tablet OS based on WIn CE(WP7) it seems to me that they are going to deprecate WInCE. They don't even *talk* about tablets running on WinCE. And MS is the king of FUD. Notice how little was said about WIn CE in general at CES. That silence is telling IMO.
Most SW developers are taking SW developed for mobile phones and scaling it up to work on tablets. I think MS will take their tablet OS (Win 8) and scale it down for mobile phones. Whether or not this is a good idea, I don't know. But Ballmer in the past has questioned why Google has 2 OSs. Looks like he wants to eliminate that 'problem' at MS.
MS probably do have other valid reasons for porting Windows to ARM, but now that they are doing that AND not releasing a tablet OS based on WIn CE(WP7) it seems to me that they are going to deprecate WInCE. They don't even *talk* about tablets running on WinCE. And MS is the king of FUD. Notice how little was said about WIn CE in general at CES. That silence is telling IMO.
Most SW developers are taking SW developed for mobile phones and scaling it up to work on tablets. I think MS will take their tablet OS (Win 8) and scale it down for mobile phones. Whether or not this is a good idea, I don't know. But Ballmer in the past has questioned why Google has 2 OSs. Looks like he wants to eliminate that 'problem' at MS.
Maybe, but WP7 was talked up quite a bit and I think it’s pretty good. If I couldn’t have my iPhone I’d have an HTC/WP7 device next.
They don’t have a tablet version, which I think is a mistake, since they could have had the first real competitor to the iPad and had very little resistance from others had they focused on that first over smartphones.
PS: I wonder if Win8 on ARM may indicate MS is planning to use the same kernel across the board for smartphones, tablets, desktops, servers. Giving MS two years to get Win8 out that puts it 6 years behind Apple’s first iPhone based on OS X. That sounds about right.
Comments
that's where the market is going and even on iOS there is some fragmentation. there are separate OS files you download for each device supported with different drivers and feature sets in them
Not following you. Are you saying that the trivial differences among a few models and generations of iOS devices is somehow equivalent to MS maintaining two entirely separate mobile operating systems?
apple spearheaded the way with the iphone and ipad but as the products mature people will want more features in their apps and most of the apps now are nothing more than browser bookmarks or lite versions of desktop apps. which is why they are so cheap. people will demand the products mature.
just like PC's. in 1980 they barely did anything. then came office apps and photoshop and Mac desktop publishing. every year the software matured to where you could run more tasks on it that were previously only possible on mainframes
as things matured we went from command line, to simple GUI overlays, to real GUI and file management and other things. expect the same cycle to be repeated in the mobile space
Seems to me that it's Apple that's in the driver's seat when it comes to fully featured touch based mobile devices.
In iOS they have a substantial subset of OS X running with arguably the best of class touch UI, now several generations old and rapidly maturing.
MS has the well reviewed but generally regarded to be somewhat underpowered (in the manner of first generation software) Windows Mobile 7, and at some point an as yet unknown version of Windows running on ARM hardware.
Apple has already done the work of turning their desktop OS into a lean, touch friendly mobile OS, and extending its capabilities as hardware becomes more capable is just a matter of adding additional interface elements, if necessary. The code to do the heavy lifting is already there.
Jamming a non-backwards compatible Windows onto ARM architecture with the same old funky "touch" capacities that never caught on over the last 10 years isn't bringing new levels of sophistication or capability to the market, it's just reiterating the failed Windows Tablet strategy on less power hungry chips. I suspect that battery life wasn't the only thing keeping these devices from selling in any great numbers.
Jamming a non-backwards compatible Windows onto ARM architecture with the same old funky "touch" capacities that never caught on over the last 10 years isn't bringing new levels of sophistication or capability to the market, it's just reiterating the failed Windows Tablet strategy on less power hungry chips. I suspect that battery life wasn't the only thing keeping these devices from selling in any great numbers.
I don?t see Windows 8 on ARM as MS trying to push a desktop version of Windows onto tablets and other mobile handhelds. I see it as MS realizing that ARM will be progressing into and beyond performance areas that Atom is current in, where Windows does run. IOW, I see MS seeing a future market for inexpensive and low power desktops, notebooks, servers, and commercial machines that run a desktop versions of Windows. I think this is smart.
For tablets I would expect MS to have WP7 for tablets by next CES, if not earlier. The only dumb move I think MS has made this past year is pushing WP7 for smartphones which are now fairly saturated and ignoring the brand new tablet market running optimized mobile OSes. I think MS could have taken a pretty good chunk of that marketshare this year and held onto it with the iPad having no contender until HP-WebOS, Android 3.0 and PlayBook start gauchely hitting shelves this Summer or later.
What an "invention"; taking the concept of something already done and doing it in software.
AFAIK, virtually everything a computer does in some way emulates "something already done", from word processing to email to video editing to photo editing. All UIs make heavy use of recognizable "real word" processes, from button pushing to dragging to moving pointers to opening folders.
All unpatentable? On account of the "prior art" of the physical world?
AFAIK, virtually everything a computer does in some way emulates "something already done", from word processing to email to video editing to photo editing. All UIs make heavy use of recognizable "real word" processes, from button pushing to dragging to moving pointers to opening folders.
All unpatentable? On account of the "prior art" of the physical world?
It?s beyond my ken but I have read quite a bit about CocoaTouch being tied to the underlying OS in ways that allow it to be smoother and more efficient and how Android and other mobile OSes are slow and require better HW to do the same basic task because the UI?s are so poorly designed and integrated. I?m sure someone will be along to expound or correct everything I just wrote but it seems to me that if even a part of that is true then that is IP worth protecting.
Quite a statement considering it's 2011
It?s beyond my ken but I have read quite a bit about CocoaTouch being tied to the underlying OS in ways that allow it to be smoother and more efficient and how Android and other mobile OSes are slow and require better HW to do the same basic task because the UI?s are so poorly designed and integrated. I?m sure someone will be along to expound or correct everything I just wrote but it seems to me that if even a part of that is true then that is IP worth protecting.
It's because CocoaTouch uses the GPU to render the UI, where its supposed to render things more efficiently, because the GPU is designed for graphics. Android and the rest use the CPU to render graphics in addition to running the system.
Secondly, who thinks WIndows on ARM is a good idea? Software will have to be re-written to get onto ARM, and you might as well start designing a new interface if that's the case. There's no point for Windows 8 to be on ARM if there's zero third-party software out there that runs on it currently.
So you?re saying they are lying because they eventually showed up?
I'm talking about what they have claimed isn't possible and what was missing for the first two hardware cycles. No MMS for first gen iPhone because it can't do it? Lie 3G isn't a good experience with a picture on the springboard background? Lie Had one on my 3G the first day I could jailbreak it. Worked just fine up until I wiped it and sold it. Apple says that Game Center isn't supported on the 3G. Why? Because they can sell more hardware that way, not because it isn't capable. Forget all that did you? Jailbreakers were doing all of that, and much much more long before Apple said it couldn't be done on the first iPhone and the 3G. How did Apple introduce those new features? With shiny new hardware that somehow made it possible with the exact same hardware inside a different shaped case (iPhone to iPhone 3G).
C/C/P isn't as serious a deal to me, it wasn't a huge feature for me then and it's nice to have now. But it's nothing to flame WP7 about. At least they aren't taking two years to put it in there. It's amazing that Apple didn't have this much much sooner though, given all the complaining people were doing. Same with MMS, same with making your own ringtones rather than buying them, same with sending an SMS to more than one person at a time, same with forwarding an SMS. They were very late with every basic feature with the excuse that it 'wasn't good enough for Apple' or 'we finally did it right' when in fact jailbreakers had it working long before Apple deemed it good enough, and it was indeed possible. They lead the pack in touchscreen phones, not phone features. They lied to sell more next gen handsets and drew out feature implementation to aid this. For cripes sake we still can't set any system sound other than a ringtone. That's total bs this day and age. That feature should have been there in 1.0! 4 major iOS releases and we just now get to change an SMS tone to ones that are about 15 seconds too long. That's really leading from the front. If Microsoft is stupid for not having c/c/p in WP7 version 1.0, then what is Apple for (finally) allowing you to set a text tone that's 14 seconds long? Geniuses? How about let me make a tone of something I want of my own liking without having to resort to a jailbreak? Is that so hard? Is that unApplefan of me?
I didn't mean to imply that Apple isn't doing a fantstic job on the mobile phone front, they are by a longshot. But to criticize WP7 for not having the basic features of a phone, c/c/p ,MMS, and so on is disingenuous at the least. Apple went two years without having these things and Microsoft started from scratch throwing out everything they had and are rapidly updating their feature set. Give them time, they'll come into their own. I don't understand why Apple wasn't drawn across the coals for missing something like MMS when the hardware was capable of it and other examples of why some things couldn't be done in a timely manner. Most of the features that they were missing for two years were on phones that didn't have a fancy touchscreen and were out long before the iPhone. 6 months is a lifetime in the mobile phone industry.
They weren't leading anything back then, they were way behind on every basic feature. I fail to see how 'stepping in Apples footsteps' equals trashing every single line of code from their previous mobile OS and starting anew. They are implementing the same features that were around when Apple started and pushing them out faster without lying about why it can't be done with what they have. Christ it's been not even six months since it was out and their updates are coming much quicker than Apple had done, and I'm not talking games and other apps just bare bones basics, and they aren't trying to get you to buy next gen hardware to get said features.
You can't rake one over the coals and not the other, it's not subjective. I love my iPhone 4, but I also know that Apple released a crap first gen phone feature wise and has steadily released new features to coincide with new hardware. Microsoft isn't doing that. That's fact.
Don't get me started with iOS's extremely stupid/infuriating and extremely broken notification system.
I'm talking about what they have claimed isn't possible and what was missing for the first two hardware cycles. No MMS for first gen iPhone because it can't do it? Lie 3G isn't a good experience with a picture on the springboard background? Lie Had one on my 3G the first day I could jailbreak it. Worked just fine up until I wiped it and sold it. Apple says that Game Center isn't supported on the 3G. Why? Because they can sell more hardware that way, not because it isn't capable. Forget all that did you? Jailbreakers were doing all of that, and much much more long before Apple said it couldn't be done on the first iPhone and the 3G. How did Apple introduce those new features? With shiny new hardware that somehow made it possible with the exact same hardware inside a different shaped case (iPhone to iPhone 3G).
C/C/P isn't as serious a deal to me, it wasn't a huge feature for me then and it's nice to have now. But it's nothing to flame WP7 about. At least they aren't taking two years to put it in there. It's amazing that Apple didn't have this much much sooner though, given all the complaining people were doing. Same with MMS, same with making your own ringtones rather than buying them, same with sending an SMS to more than one person at a time, same with forwarding an SMS. They were very late with every basic feature with the excuse that it 'wasn't good enough for Apple' or 'we finally did it right' when in fact jailbreakers had it working long before Apple deemed it good enough, and it was indeed possible. They lead the pack in touchscreen phones, not phone features.
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1) I don?t think they ever said a word why MMS wasn?t there. I have to assume it was something contractual with AT&T. If true, that sucks but they were also the carrier that allowed the iPhone to take root and make every other cellphone better for consumers because of it so any short-term quirky network reasons AT&T had I consider it the less of two evils. Or it could be that Apple just didn?t care. Meaning they focused on things that were more important to them, like building a new QuickTime framework, getting a mobile version of Safari that would be useful, etc.
2) The wallpapers you added to your iPhone 3G wasn?t the same that Apple has on theres. There is actually quite a bit going on there. Sure, they could have made it simple like the JB apps but this is Apple we?re talking about. They either do it the right way or not at all. Which of those apps are adding the drop shadows to the text and icons? The iPhone 3G with 128MB RAM was already hurting enough on 4.0 without adding to it.
3) Game Center isn?t on the 3G and FaceTime isn?t on the 3G or 3GS. Your expectations that every feature should be available is erroneous. Unless you have stats of how much RAM and stability data you can?t really say that they were wrong. Your assumption that it?s to sell new iPhones is also ignoring that you got an update at all. The Sony Xperia with Android 2.1 that came out 6 months ago in August is officially not getting an update. IOW, Apple has no requirement to have giving your 3G an update and based on how poorly 4.0 ran on many of them even with resource heavy features removed I say they should just reduce it to only the previous model if users are feeling an entitlement with a 3 generation old device.
4) As previous stated, MS isn?t having to figure out the logistics of cut/copy/paste the way Apple did. Those silly comments people made that it?s been around for decades and all you need are a clipboard are asinine. Even the first iOS App Store developer that created an app that allowed for it stated that Apple would have a much harder time of it since it would have to be universal to the OS, not something that could alter between apps. Again, Android still doesn?t have it figured out.
5) You?re again ignoring that MS had touch-based mobile OSes with cut/copy/paste for many, many years and now they release a new version without it and yet you aren?t saying MS held off on this feature so they can sell more WP7 licenses a year later. In fact, you?ve completely ignored MS coming in years later, covering no new ground, having this be an extension of WinCE at the foundation, but Apple starting from scratch was holding out the whole time. Do you realize how that makes you look?
6) Apple has never led any pack on having the most features. If you judge CE by the length of the spec sheet then no Apple product will ever be for you. I bet you are crying foul on Apple for talking up Safari on the iPhone and yet it?s still the best mobile browser I?ve used. Scrolling, tap to zoom, etc. But hey, phones had WAP browsers before the iPhone came along so they get no credit for releasing something that technically existed on some level.
I truncated your post there. I think a half-dozen body slams is enough.
PS: I?m a fan of WP7 and think MS is doing a great job with it, but your claims that Apple is lying with no proof to back it up and common sense refute your claims, well I just can?t let that slide.
I'm speechless. This is even weirder and more off-putting than Microsoft's stabs at youth market cred. It's like a parody of a trade show circus from a David Lynch movie.
Also, before Samsung gets all up in our grill about their awesome smart TVs, they should maybe do something about the complete shit pile that is their current internet enabled TV UI. It's hideous, it looks like it was tossed together from random parts and graphics and it just barely passes muster because all it has to do is let you cursor around big panels and select them. If they think that shit will fly when you're trying to do Google TVish things they're looking at a complete non-starter.
Super skinny bezels and cable for your tablet are nice, though.
Before anyone ever again complains about the general vibe of Apple product releases, they should be required to go here and look at the Samsung freakshow that got put on at CES (you have to scroll from the bottom up.
That kid on stage gave me an idea to bring Mad Max: The Road Warrior to broadway.
That kid on stage gave me an idea to bring Mad Max: The Road Warrior to broadway.
As reenacted by edgy, technologically sophisticated teens. Beyond Thunderdome. Way Beyond.
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.tuaw.com/...raphic-med.jpg
For all you simple-minded people comparing Kinect sales to iPads, it's not units. It's never been units or market share with Apple. When will you people learn?
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.tuaw.com/...raphic-med.jpg
Is it really that hard to understand why MS chose to compare the Kinect to the iPad?
Jamming a non-backwards compatible Windows onto ARM architecture with the same old funky "touch" capacities that never caught on over the last 10 years isn't bringing new levels of sophistication or capability to the market, it's just reiterating the failed Windows Tablet strategy on less power hungry chips.
It's hard to say what the hell Microsoft are thinking... maybe they don't even know themselves!
The keynote (Windows will be everywhere) makes it sound like they are going to spend the next 12-24 months porting Windows to ARM, then release the same old desktop-merged-with-mobile strategy they have been slugging away at for a decade.
It seems like they have no intention of releasing a purpose-built tablet OS. It almost sounded like they intend to push the Windows Core running on ARM down into the mobile segment currently filled by WP7.
However, then I hear that they are actually working on a totally separate "panel" (my guess: WP7 inspired) based touch shell UI for Windows 8.
The standard UI in Windows 7 is a totally pluggable component. The same core OS as Windows 7 on Windows Server 2008 R2 can run headless. So it's feasible to have the same core OS and separate user interfaces plugged on the front depending on the form factor. It could even switch between the two if you wanted to dock the tablet.
It was also leaked that they will be releasing an "App Store" in Windows 8 which will presumably cover tablets as well as the desktop.
With Silverlight coming to Xbox, as well as cable TV over IP in Australia and Microsoft's support of UltraViolet it seems like they are finally starting a push into the digital living room and they are using the Xbox to do it.
Maybe they decided that having three major platforms (WP7/Xbox/Windows) was unsustainable and they needed to consolidate before they could move forward. It's hard to say!
I still think they should have announced an Xbox branded tablet based on WP7/ARM. Probably Microsoft's biggest (only?) advantage over competitors at the moment in the mobile consumer space is gaming.
A tablet that people saw as being basically the same as the iPad... only with better games, would have sold. Maybe not enough to worry Apple at all, but it would have put Microsoft in the game until Windows 8 hit the market.
Not following you. Are you saying that the trivial differences among a few models and generations of iOS devices is somehow equivalent to MS maintaining two entirely separate mobile operating systems?
Seems to me that it's Apple that's in the driver's seat when it comes to fully featured touch based mobile devices.
In iOS they have a substantial subset of OS X running with arguably the best of class touch UI, now several generations old and rapidly maturing.
MS has the well reviewed but generally regarded to be somewhat underpowered (in the manner of first generation software) Windows Mobile 7, and at some point an as yet unknown version of Windows running on ARM hardware.
Apple has already done the work of turning their desktop OS into a lean, touch friendly mobile OS, and extending its capabilities as hardware becomes more capable is just a matter of adding additional interface elements, if necessary. The code to do the heavy lifting is already there.
Jamming a non-backwards compatible Windows onto ARM architecture with the same old funky "touch" capacities that never caught on over the last 10 years isn't bringing new levels of sophistication or capability to the market, it's just reiterating the failed Windows Tablet strategy on less power hungry chips. I suspect that battery life wasn't the only thing keeping these devices from selling in any great numbers.
i'm saying that as mobile devices mature MS doesn't have to follow the same path as Apple. they can just take the full Windows OS which starting with 7/2008 R2 is very modular and UNIX like and put it on a mobile device with minimal development effort. they already have experience with the x-box which uses a lot of code from the main Windows OS. starting back in 2002 MS has had a secret project to rewrite Windows almost from scratch and make it more modular.
same as Windows 95 and NT4. with the Pentium CPU Intel had a nice chip to run Windows and that's when it took off.
the A4 has around 260 million transistors. not sure if it includes the PowerVR. the new i core CPU's are at a billion and that includes the IGP.
Before anyone ever again complains about the general vibe of Apple product releases, they should be required to go here and look at the Samsung freakshow that got put on at CES (you have to scroll from the bottom up.
I'm speechless. This is even weirder and more off-putting than Microsoft's stabs at youth market cred. It's like a parody of a trade show circus from a David Lynch movie.
Also, before Samsung gets all up in our grill about their awesome smart TVs, they should maybe do something about the complete shit pile that is their current internet enabled TV UI. It's hideous, it looks like it was tossed together from random parts and graphics and it just barely passes muster because all it has to do is let you cursor around big panels and select them. If they think that shit will fly when you're trying to do Google TVish things they're looking at a complete non-starter.
Super skinny bezels and cable for your tablet are nice, though.
i hear the biggest complaint about the TV apps is they are slow. i played with the Yahoo apps on a 2010 LG LED TV and they are beyond slow. it's like watching trees grow. i was over at family over the new year and the LG TV software was upgraded from version 6 in the summer to version 8 something now. big difference and a lot better
if you read the engadget hands on reviews with the products most mention that they are a bit laggy. especially the Android stuff.
the A4 has around 260 million transistors. not sure if it includes the PowerVR. the new i core CPU's are at a billion and that includes the IGP.
I would assume that refers to the entire chip, not just the Cortex-A8 part of it.
I found one sight that references Tegra 2?s transistor count and the Cortex-A9.
At 260M transistors, Tegra 2 is a fairly complex chip. The total die size is approximately 49mm^2, which actually sounds big given the target market. The A9s occupy around 10% of the total die area.
just look at the last 5 years or so. 2006-2011 cell phones went from lite network usage of checking email, web access and light text based tasks like ebay or amazon searching. to 2011 when people expect to stream HD video over the cell network and get annoyed when a million people can't do it at once
I don?t see Windows 8 on ARM as MS trying to push a desktop version of Windows onto tablets and other mobile handhelds. I see it as MS realizing that ARM will be progressing into and beyond performance areas that Atom is current in, where Windows does run. IOW, I see MS seeing a future market for inexpensive and low power desktops, notebooks, servers, and commercial machines that run a desktop versions of Windows. I think this is smart.
For tablets I would expect MS to have WP7 for tablets by next CES, if not earlier. The only dumb move I think MS has made this past year is pushing WP7 for smartphones which are now fairly saturated and ignoring the brand new tablet market running optimized mobile OSes. I think MS could have taken a pretty good chunk of that marketshare this year and held onto it with the iPad having no contender until HP-WebOS, Android 3.0 and PlayBook start gauchely hitting shelves this Summer or later.
Time will tell but I think Win CE is toast.
MS probably do have other valid reasons for porting Windows to ARM, but now that they are doing that AND not releasing a tablet OS based on WIn CE(WP7) it seems to me that they are going to deprecate WInCE. They don't even *talk* about tablets running on WinCE. And MS is the king of FUD. Notice how little was said about WIn CE in general at CES. That silence is telling IMO.
Most SW developers are taking SW developed for mobile phones and scaling it up to work on tablets. I think MS will take their tablet OS (Win 8) and scale it down for mobile phones. Whether or not this is a good idea, I don't know. But Ballmer in the past has questioned why Google has 2 OSs. Looks like he wants to eliminate that 'problem' at MS.
Time will tell but I think Win CE is toast.
MS probably do have other valid reasons for porting Windows to ARM, but now that they are doing that AND not releasing a tablet OS based on WIn CE(WP7) it seems to me that they are going to deprecate WInCE. They don't even *talk* about tablets running on WinCE. And MS is the king of FUD. Notice how little was said about WIn CE in general at CES. That silence is telling IMO.
Most SW developers are taking SW developed for mobile phones and scaling it up to work on tablets. I think MS will take their tablet OS (Win 8) and scale it down for mobile phones. Whether or not this is a good idea, I don't know. But Ballmer in the past has questioned why Google has 2 OSs. Looks like he wants to eliminate that 'problem' at MS.
Maybe, but WP7 was talked up quite a bit and I think it’s pretty good. If I couldn’t have my iPhone I’d have an HTC/WP7 device next.
They don’t have a tablet version, which I think is a mistake, since they could have had the first real competitor to the iPad and had very little resistance from others had they focused on that first over smartphones.
PS: I wonder if Win8 on ARM may indicate MS is planning to use the same kernel across the board for smartphones, tablets, desktops, servers. Giving MS two years to get Win8 out that puts it 6 years behind Apple’s first iPhone based on OS X. That sounds about right.