It went on sale June 5th with the full release on the 6th.
I put in the "most likely" because technically Palm can record sales when the carrier (Sprint) received its Pres, which could've happened before May 31st (though I doubt it).
I enjoyed peaking at your bookmarks and trying to figure out what some of them are. You still use LiveJournal? As for your Google search, were you looking up the movie Rom-Com?
I suppose I did put that out there. There are a few friends I have from the livejournal heyday who still use it. so it keeps me in touch with them.
And as for the rom-com...I was doing a wine tasting not even a block away from where they were shooting the film. So I had everybody asking me what was going on as if i would have some idea. there was a jack and a paul rudd sighting so i googled it to try and find the name of the movie. which hasn't been announced yet. so a bit of a fruitless effort.
Is there a person who wants 50000 applications..? Me, I'd be happy with 5-10 good ones.
Strange how no one remembers iPhone didn't have 50000 applications when first released, and still managed to beat Palm Treo line that did have numerous applications - and some of them very useful.
iPhone has 50000 apps because it was selling so well without apps that platform eventually became interesting for developers. I think same rules will work for any other device. Good phone will sell itself initially, and additional apps will bring more functionality and keep it actual down the time line.
The point is the iphone has brought focus onto apps. Many people now want applications on their phones, it may seem unimportant to you but to all those people downloading apps, it benefits them. I was recently in the Apple store and an an old lady came in there about help downloading apps onto her iphone. It put a smile on my face.
The Pre is *still* takeover bait. In light of what the iPhone continues to bring to the table, the pre is nothing special.
Palm is no innovator in handheld devices, anyway.That title goes to Apple, who introduced the PDA to the world with Newton. Palm is a derivative company; a follower, not an innovator. If Palm is a pioneer at anything, it's in sitting around on its collective ass, resting on its laurels, milking/screwing its cusotmers, and then running around in a too-late frenzy like a chicken after Apple lopped off its head.
Which sounds very much like another, much larger company that can't seem to get its act together.
Too little, too late.
Gotta disagree with you, at one time Palm WAS the PDA market. Their innovations such as getting handwriting to work let Palm succceed where Apple failed. The Treo line set a new standard for smart phones and again they owned the market for several years. The problem was they stopped the innovation no thanks to one terrible decision after another from their management team. More attenion was made to what the company's name was and the logo instead of the product. I'm glad to see they are back, this will keep the pressure on Apple to innovate. As consumers we win!
Yeah, it's a theme in the tech site comments and elsewhere that works the old "Apple makes shiny toys for stupid people" meme, which never seems to really die no matter how much reality moves on.
Apparently all those apps aren't really anything to be impressed by, because most of them are fart apps or games and the iPhone is one big playpen for trendy teens 'n posers.
When you're ready to get "real work done" you'll of course reach for a WinMo, eh, Blackberry, eh, Android, eh, Pre!
I'm actually very interested in the psychology of "easy to use" equals "not serious." It's been a hallmark of anti-Apple sentiment since before I can remember. There was also a corollary notion, that "caring about the fit, finish and look of the user experience" equaled "vapid and shallow", but that has receded as MS and other have taken to tricking out their efforts with bling.
Back in Windows 3 days, it was taken as a truism that real computer users welcomed eye searingly ugly as proof that no valuable resources were being wasted on design.
Of course, back in those days "lot of game titles available" was also evidence of a superior platform, so I guess consistency isn't the long suit of the inveterate Apple basher.
You are on to something here. I'm visually impaired, and I encountered resistant advice to getting a Mac instead of a computer with Windows installed. But, I was aware of the reputation of Mac OS X, and Apple's prowess in product design.
With respect to the iPhone 3G S, I am impressed with the hardware power in combination with the iPhone 3.0 OS. Beginning with the iPhone 3G S, VoiceOver, Zoom, white-on-black, Voice Control, and multi-lingual support is now available. Plus, an API to support hardware attachments.
For some of us in the visually impaired community, the iPhone 3G S is going to be the start of a "wonderful friendship". I do not have an iPhone now, but I know having an iPhone 3G S is doable for me.
If you want to get caught up in the "which phone/service is better" then the ONLY competitor is the Crackberry (aka Blackberry from RIM).
8.7M sold in the last quarter.
Big number.
Better than the iPhone.
Android and Prē, not so much.
If you look worldwide, Nokia still sells more "smartphones" or "converged devices" then BB. They sold 13.7m, of which 5m were N-series and over 3m were E-series.
At some point, this category is going to need to be subdivided once again, because iPhone and even the Pre, G1, and N97, are really in a separate class from most of the other "smartphones." But I'm not really sure what criteria should be used to subdivide.
I put in the "most likely" because technically Palm can record sales when the carrier (Sprint) received its Pres, which could've happened before May 31st (though I doubt it).
I think Palm's biggest problem is the name: Pre. What the hell does it mean? It's just stupid. Pre-what? What will the next phone be called, Post? Pri?
I don't want to take away from your comment, as I think it's a true statement, but I am really curious about what everybody wants to multitask.
maybe you weren't around during the Mac Plus days, but once you have real robust multitasking you will never go back. It just allows for an ease of use you can't get by any other method.
Quote:
I can only think of a couple but I don't see a "super necessity" for it:
that sort of logic can be extended to smart phones themselves. Are they even a nessecity, many would say no.
On iPhone it is however a necessity as Apple uses multitasking in a privledged manner. The problem is the lack of user app multitasking.
Quote:
Listen to Pandora (some other radio app) while doing something else (checking e-mail, browsing the web, etc.).
I have a number of radio apps installed and honestly use them very little. But that is me, I just don't listen to the radio much at all. I can think of a number of good ideas that ideally would have multitasking support available to them. Some examples;
1. A GPS tracking app. That collect your position every five minutes or so.
2. Health monitoring. Great for workouts, just slap a bluetooth patch on your body some place to capture heart rate and other info.
3. execise equipment monitoring. Log your performance, distance traveled, intensity and so forth for bike riders and other outdoor activities. Apparently Apple has something up it's sleeves here.
4. Communications with lab instruments / meters. The classic usage here is to monitor a temp at a fixed rate. That could be minutes or hours, the idea being to collect for later processing.
5. Document creation from multiple types of data, each piece created via it's own app. The classic example being a spread sheet with embedded art.
6. Automatic position notification. An app sends a predefined txt to someone based on their approximate location.
7. It would be incredibly nice to be able to flip between the app of your choice and the calculator of your choice without the program reloads. This is especially useful for programmable caculators with advanced features. In fact the idea of a caculator is so useful that it ought to be always running.
8. It is very useful to have mail and the web browser running at the same time. Especially when so much E-Mail these days comes with links for the web browser to open. Again this just eliminates the open and close cycles. The thing is on a bad day you may haveten or twenty E-Mails with links to follow.
9. Apps and media dowloads in background. Why should you have to sit in an app waiting for a movie to download. Do it in background! WiFi or cell I don't care, the idea is to do something useful while your purchase downloads.
10. Better stop watch apps
11. Audio logging. Say you are at a lecture and you want to record it, a back ground app could keep on recording no matter what else the iPhone was doing. This sort of feature could be useful for reporters trying to cover a story while other things are going on requiring the iPhone. Big market here if the right optimized microphone can be had.
Those are just a few things that don't involve listening to radio.
Quote:
How many other things can you do at the same time on a phone?
As long as there is an SDK and support for Multitasking that question can not be answered. The issue is the biomass behind the XCode window trying to implement his new idea. As long as the platform is viable there will be new apps some of which will run in background.
Also I have to say the issue that is always brought up about battery life is BS. The user of the iPhone is intelligent enough to avoid battery draining apps when required.
Course you know that Palm INVENTED the touch screen with their Palm Pilots and owns all patents related to single-touch. Check your dates buddy.
Wow 22nd post and you couldn't be further off, PALM used newtons technology for handwriting, they just paid apple to license it. So you make a statement, calling someone else out, yet you are clueless. KK you can probably leave now.
Preciously speaking, Palm presumed that if they made a preemptive presence before the preliminary 2009 iPhone preamble they would have a pretty precious lead, but they pre-released the Pre before it was a real predator which prevented the Pre from prevailing despite Palm?s McNamee presumptuous preaching of the iPhone?s predoom and the Pre?s preeminence.
maybe you weren't around during the Mac Plus days, but once you have real robust multitasking you will never go back. It just allows for an ease of use you can't get by any other method.
On iPhone it is however a necessity as Apple uses multitasking in a privledged manner. The problem is the lack of user app multitasking.
Also I have to say the issue that is always brought up about battery life is BS. The user of the iPhone is intelligent enough to avoid battery draining apps when required.
Dave
Comparing the iPhone's single-tasking with the Mac Plus is not valid. The Mac Plus was single tasking because that's all it was capable of! The iPhone is single-tasking (at the user level), because Apple disagrees with you about battery draining. These are completely different reasons for single-tasking. Back in the 80's, Apple was hamstrung if you will, working from a position of weakness, whereas today they're in a position of strength.
It's perfectly okay that people like you disagree with them about both the importance of user-level multi-tasking as well as the drawbacks of rapid battery usage. I hope you purchase and get a lot of multi-tasking use out of one of the competing products. But don't kid yourself for a second and think that Apple designed the iPhone as single-tasking because of any weakness on their part. They did it because they think you're wrong on both counts.
Back in Windows 3 days, it was taken as a truism that real computer users welcomed eye searingly ugly as proof that no valuable resources were being wasted on design.
LOL... Absolute best description of Win 3 I ever read/
I think we all agree, but I think many of us feel that most apps don?t need background apps to still be functional, even when offline, and that the way it?s implemented is very important. I don?t think WebOS, Android or WinMo are doing it correctly for end users or developers.
Quote:
On iPhone it is however a necessity as Apple uses multitasking in a privledged manner. The problem is the lack of user app multitasking.
I have a number of radio apps installed and honestly use them very little. But that is me, I just don't listen to the radio much at all. I can think of a number of good ideas that ideally would have multitasking support available to them. Some examples;
1. A GPS tracking app. That collect your position every five minutes or so.
2. Health monitoring. Great for workouts, just slap a bluetooth patch on your body some place to capture heart rate and other info.
3. execise equipment monitoring. Log your performance, distance traveled, intensity and so forth for bike riders and other outdoor activities. Apparently Apple has something up it's sleeves here.
4. Communications with lab instruments / meters. The classic usage here is to monitor a temp at a fixed rate. That could be minutes or hours, the idea being to collect for later processing.
5. Document creation from multiple types of data, each piece created via it's own app. The classic example being a spread sheet with embedded art.
6. Automatic position notification. An app sends a predefined txt to someone based on their approximate location.
7. It would be incredibly nice to be able to flip between the app of your choice and the calculator of your choice without the program reloads. This is especially useful for programmable caculators with advanced features. In fact the idea of a caculator is so useful that it ought to be always running.
8. It is very useful to have mail and the web browser running at the same time. Especially when so much E-Mail these days comes with links for the web browser to open. Again this just eliminates the open and close cycles. The thing is on a bad day you may haveten or twenty E-Mails with links to follow.
9. Apps and media dowloads in background. Why should you have to sit in an app waiting for a movie to download. Do it in background! WiFi or cell I don't care, the idea is to do something useful while your purchase downloads.
10. Better stop watch apps
11. Audio logging. Say you are at a lecture and you want to record it, a back ground app could keep on recording no matter what else the iPhone was doing. This sort of feature could be useful for reporters trying to cover a story while other things are going on requiring the iPhone. Big market here if the right optimized microphone can be had.
Those are just a few things that don't involve listening to radio.
Excellent list!
Quote:
As long as there is an SDK and support for Multitasking that question can not be answered. The issue is the biomass behind the XCode window trying to implement his new idea. As long as the platform is viable there will be new apps some of which will run in background.
For that reason I think Apple is working on background apps. I support their decision not to include it with the previous two models as CPU and RAM just aren?t good enough, but that limitation seems to have vanished as of today.
Quote:
Also I have to say the issue that is always brought up about battery life is BS. The user of the iPhone is intelligent enough to avoid battery draining apps when required.
I don?t think it?s BS, but it?s certainly not the most prominent issue. I don?t think that we should automatically assume the user of a consumer device is tech savvy. With a device like the iPhone I think it?s important for Apple to work out the logistics of how backgrounds apps run and not jsut let them loose until the RAM is filled.
For example, Apple could allow for 2 apps to run in the background, but only apps that meet RAM, CPU and internet bandwidth guidelines. This would help maintain the usability of your foreground app and help developers since they know the maximum ?damage? the background apps could inflict on the system at large.
This could be turned on via the Settings » Background Apps where apps that have met the requirements by app are listed and where you get to toggle On the apps you wish to allow. This may include the iPod app as it does seem to take a toll on the system, at least with the first two iPhones.
Two know which iPhones are running in the background the Menu Bar could have a small icon to the left of the battery indictor or other icons on that side denoting a [B} for background apps running. Or a small icon of the app that is running in the background, though that may be too small to represent. The icon on the Home Page that is set for background app running could get a special badge or have the icon change slightly but noticeably so it?s easy to see.
But how would you kill the app if you no longer wanted it to run in the background? Would you have to go into settings to toggle it to Off?
Just some ideas, that was off the top of my head for how Apple could do it safely for their less-than-technical crowd. I?d love to hear some better examples.
Wanting to take signal strength out of the equation idealizes the situation, which just doesn't make much sense.
On the contrary! It makes total sense to make sure that the signal strength is the same for both phones.
If the Sprint signal was stronger (which seems to be suggested by the one iPhone going to Edge) then how can you determine which one is faster? The answer is you can't.
Comments
It went on sale June 5th with the full release on the 6th.
I put in the "most likely" because technically Palm can record sales when the carrier (Sprint) received its Pres, which could've happened before May 31st (though I doubt it).
palm pre take over bait by company that needs a real OS, i suggest Nokia which is having its
clocked cleaned and needs to return some momentum
RIM has an OS, MS has an OS, moto gave up so who else would MOST benefit from
the pre webOS? i say nokia
palm doesn't have the money or resources to rebuild the pre its getting the rep for cheap
and expensive, nokia could use its quality mark and infuse new life into their line
I enjoyed peaking at your bookmarks and trying to figure out what some of them are. You still use LiveJournal? As for your Google search, were you looking up the movie Rom-Com?
I suppose I did put that out there. There are a few friends I have from the livejournal heyday who still use it. so it keeps me in touch with them.
And as for the rom-com...I was doing a wine tasting not even a block away from where they were shooting the film. So I had everybody asking me what was going on as if i would have some idea. there was a jack and a paul rudd sighting so i googled it to try and find the name of the movie. which hasn't been announced yet. so a bit of a fruitless effort.
Is there a person who wants 50000 applications..? Me, I'd be happy with 5-10 good ones.
Strange how no one remembers iPhone didn't have 50000 applications when first released, and still managed to beat Palm Treo line that did have numerous applications - and some of them very useful.
iPhone has 50000 apps because it was selling so well without apps that platform eventually became interesting for developers. I think same rules will work for any other device. Good phone will sell itself initially, and additional apps will bring more functionality and keep it actual down the time line.
The point is the iphone has brought focus onto apps. Many people now want applications on their phones, it may seem unimportant to you but to all those people downloading apps, it benefits them. I was recently in the Apple store and an an old lady came in there about help downloading apps onto her iphone. It put a smile on my face.
The Pre is *still* takeover bait. In light of what the iPhone continues to bring to the table, the pre is nothing special.
Palm is no innovator in handheld devices, anyway.That title goes to Apple, who introduced the PDA to the world with Newton. Palm is a derivative company; a follower, not an innovator. If Palm is a pioneer at anything, it's in sitting around on its collective ass, resting on its laurels, milking/screwing its cusotmers, and then running around in a too-late frenzy like a chicken after Apple lopped off its head.
Which sounds very much like another, much larger company that can't seem to get its act together.
Too little, too late.
Gotta disagree with you, at one time Palm WAS the PDA market. Their innovations such as getting handwriting to work let Palm succceed where Apple failed. The Treo line set a new standard for smart phones and again they owned the market for several years. The problem was they stopped the innovation no thanks to one terrible decision after another from their management team. More attenion was made to what the company's name was and the logo instead of the product. I'm glad to see they are back, this will keep the pressure on Apple to innovate. As consumers we win!
Yeah, it's a theme in the tech site comments and elsewhere that works the old "Apple makes shiny toys for stupid people" meme, which never seems to really die no matter how much reality moves on.
Apparently all those apps aren't really anything to be impressed by, because most of them are fart apps or games and the iPhone is one big playpen for trendy teens 'n posers.
When you're ready to get "real work done" you'll of course reach for a WinMo, eh, Blackberry, eh, Android, eh, Pre!
I'm actually very interested in the psychology of "easy to use" equals "not serious." It's been a hallmark of anti-Apple sentiment since before I can remember. There was also a corollary notion, that "caring about the fit, finish and look of the user experience" equaled "vapid and shallow", but that has receded as MS and other have taken to tricking out their efforts with bling.
Back in Windows 3 days, it was taken as a truism that real computer users welcomed eye searingly ugly as proof that no valuable resources were being wasted on design.
Of course, back in those days "lot of game titles available" was also evidence of a superior platform, so I guess consistency isn't the long suit of the inveterate Apple basher.
You are on to something here. I'm visually impaired, and I encountered resistant advice to getting a Mac instead of a computer with Windows installed. But, I was aware of the reputation of Mac OS X, and Apple's prowess in product design.
With respect to the iPhone 3G S, I am impressed with the hardware power in combination with the iPhone 3.0 OS. Beginning with the iPhone 3G S, VoiceOver, Zoom, white-on-black, Voice Control, and multi-lingual support is now available. Plus, an API to support hardware attachments.
For some of us in the visually impaired community, the iPhone 3G S is going to be the start of a "wonderful friendship". I do not have an iPhone now, but I know having an iPhone 3G S is doable for me.
If you want to get caught up in the "which phone/service is better" then the ONLY competitor is the Crackberry (aka Blackberry from RIM).
8.7M sold in the last quarter.
Big number.
Better than the iPhone.
Android and Prē, not so much.
If you look worldwide, Nokia still sells more "smartphones" or "converged devices" then BB. They sold 13.7m, of which 5m were N-series and over 3m were E-series.
At some point, this category is going to need to be subdivided once again, because iPhone and even the Pre, G1, and N97, are really in a separate class from most of the other "smartphones." But I'm not really sure what criteria should be used to subdivide.
I put in the "most likely" because technically Palm can record sales when the carrier (Sprint) received its Pres, which could've happened before May 31st (though I doubt it).
Good call. I hadn?t thought of that.
If you want to get caught up in the "which phone/service is better" then the ONLY competitor is the Crackberry (aka Blackberry from RIM).
8.7M sold in the last quarter.
Big number.
Better than the iPhone.
Android and Prē, not so much.
Actually 7.8
Actually 7.8
Chastized, I am.
On another note, I found it amusing how hard the pre is being advertised on appleinsider
That page is probably most of Sprint's advertising budget right there...
I think Palm's biggest problem is the name: Pre. What the hell does it mean? It's just stupid. Pre-what? What will the next phone be called, Post? Pri?
Premature!
Actually 7.8
Yes and did anyone bother to check out the sales breakdown?
I don't want to take away from your comment, as I think it's a true statement, but I am really curious about what everybody wants to multitask.
maybe you weren't around during the Mac Plus days, but once you have real robust multitasking you will never go back. It just allows for an ease of use you can't get by any other method.
I can only think of a couple but I don't see a "super necessity" for it:
that sort of logic can be extended to smart phones themselves. Are they even a nessecity, many would say no.
On iPhone it is however a necessity as Apple uses multitasking in a privledged manner. The problem is the lack of user app multitasking.
Listen to Pandora (some other radio app) while doing something else (checking e-mail, browsing the web, etc.).
I have a number of radio apps installed and honestly use them very little. But that is me, I just don't listen to the radio much at all. I can think of a number of good ideas that ideally would have multitasking support available to them. Some examples;
1. A GPS tracking app. That collect your position every five minutes or so.
2. Health monitoring. Great for workouts, just slap a bluetooth patch on your body some place to capture heart rate and other info.
3. execise equipment monitoring. Log your performance, distance traveled, intensity and so forth for bike riders and other outdoor activities. Apparently Apple has something up it's sleeves here.
4. Communications with lab instruments / meters. The classic usage here is to monitor a temp at a fixed rate. That could be minutes or hours, the idea being to collect for later processing.
5. Document creation from multiple types of data, each piece created via it's own app. The classic example being a spread sheet with embedded art.
6. Automatic position notification. An app sends a predefined txt to someone based on their approximate location.
7. It would be incredibly nice to be able to flip between the app of your choice and the calculator of your choice without the program reloads. This is especially useful for programmable caculators with advanced features. In fact the idea of a caculator is so useful that it ought to be always running.
8. It is very useful to have mail and the web browser running at the same time. Especially when so much E-Mail these days comes with links for the web browser to open. Again this just eliminates the open and close cycles. The thing is on a bad day you may haveten or twenty E-Mails with links to follow.
9. Apps and media dowloads in background. Why should you have to sit in an app waiting for a movie to download. Do it in background! WiFi or cell I don't care, the idea is to do something useful while your purchase downloads.
10. Better stop watch apps
11. Audio logging. Say you are at a lecture and you want to record it, a back ground app could keep on recording no matter what else the iPhone was doing. This sort of feature could be useful for reporters trying to cover a story while other things are going on requiring the iPhone. Big market here if the right optimized microphone can be had.
Those are just a few things that don't involve listening to radio.
How many other things can you do at the same time on a phone?
As long as there is an SDK and support for Multitasking that question can not be answered. The issue is the biomass behind the XCode window trying to implement his new idea. As long as the platform is viable there will be new apps some of which will run in background.
Also I have to say the issue that is always brought up about battery life is BS. The user of the iPhone is intelligent enough to avoid battery draining apps when required.
Dave
Course you know that Palm INVENTED the touch screen with their Palm Pilots and owns all patents related to single-touch. Check your dates buddy.
Wow 22nd post and you couldn't be further off, PALM used newtons technology for handwriting, they just paid apple to license it. So you make a statement, calling someone else out, yet you are clueless. KK you can probably leave now.
Preciously speaking, Palm presumed that if they made a preemptive presence before the preliminary 2009 iPhone preamble they would have a pretty precious lead, but they pre-released the Pre before it was a real predator which prevented the Pre from prevailing despite Palm?s McNamee presumptuous preaching of the iPhone?s predoom and the Pre?s preeminence.
...Poo Poo Pee Doo
maybe you weren't around during the Mac Plus days, but once you have real robust multitasking you will never go back. It just allows for an ease of use you can't get by any other method.
On iPhone it is however a necessity as Apple uses multitasking in a privledged manner. The problem is the lack of user app multitasking.
Also I have to say the issue that is always brought up about battery life is BS. The user of the iPhone is intelligent enough to avoid battery draining apps when required.
Dave
Comparing the iPhone's single-tasking with the Mac Plus is not valid. The Mac Plus was single tasking because that's all it was capable of! The iPhone is single-tasking (at the user level), because Apple disagrees with you about battery draining. These are completely different reasons for single-tasking. Back in the 80's, Apple was hamstrung if you will, working from a position of weakness, whereas today they're in a position of strength.
It's perfectly okay that people like you disagree with them about both the importance of user-level multi-tasking as well as the drawbacks of rapid battery usage. I hope you purchase and get a lot of multi-tasking use out of one of the competing products. But don't kid yourself for a second and think that Apple designed the iPhone as single-tasking because of any weakness on their part. They did it because they think you're wrong on both counts.
Y
Back in Windows 3 days, it was taken as a truism that real computer users welcomed eye searingly ugly as proof that no valuable resources were being wasted on design.
LOL... Absolute best description of Win 3 I ever read/
Multitasking is a good thing!
I think we all agree, but I think many of us feel that most apps don?t need background apps to still be functional, even when offline, and that the way it?s implemented is very important. I don?t think WebOS, Android or WinMo are doing it correctly for end users or developers.
On iPhone it is however a necessity as Apple uses multitasking in a privledged manner. The problem is the lack of user app multitasking.
I have a number of radio apps installed and honestly use them very little. But that is me, I just don't listen to the radio much at all. I can think of a number of good ideas that ideally would have multitasking support available to them. Some examples;
1. A GPS tracking app. That collect your position every five minutes or so.
2. Health monitoring. Great for workouts, just slap a bluetooth patch on your body some place to capture heart rate and other info.
3. execise equipment monitoring. Log your performance, distance traveled, intensity and so forth for bike riders and other outdoor activities. Apparently Apple has something up it's sleeves here.
4. Communications with lab instruments / meters. The classic usage here is to monitor a temp at a fixed rate. That could be minutes or hours, the idea being to collect for later processing.
5. Document creation from multiple types of data, each piece created via it's own app. The classic example being a spread sheet with embedded art.
6. Automatic position notification. An app sends a predefined txt to someone based on their approximate location.
7. It would be incredibly nice to be able to flip between the app of your choice and the calculator of your choice without the program reloads. This is especially useful for programmable caculators with advanced features. In fact the idea of a caculator is so useful that it ought to be always running.
8. It is very useful to have mail and the web browser running at the same time. Especially when so much E-Mail these days comes with links for the web browser to open. Again this just eliminates the open and close cycles. The thing is on a bad day you may haveten or twenty E-Mails with links to follow.
9. Apps and media dowloads in background. Why should you have to sit in an app waiting for a movie to download. Do it in background! WiFi or cell I don't care, the idea is to do something useful while your purchase downloads.
10. Better stop watch apps
11. Audio logging. Say you are at a lecture and you want to record it, a back ground app could keep on recording no matter what else the iPhone was doing. This sort of feature could be useful for reporters trying to cover a story while other things are going on requiring the iPhone. Big market here if the right optimized microphone can be had.
Those are just a few things that don't involve listening to radio.
Excellent list!
As long as there is an SDK and support for Multitasking that question can not be answered. The issue is the biomass behind the XCode window trying to implement his new idea. As long as the platform is viable there will be new apps some of which will run in background.
For that reason I think Apple is working on background apps. I support their decision not to include it with the previous two models as CPU and RAM just aren?t good enough, but that limitation seems to have vanished as of today.
Also I have to say the issue that is always brought up about battery life is BS. The user of the iPhone is intelligent enough to avoid battery draining apps when required.
I don?t think it?s BS, but it?s certainly not the most prominent issue. I don?t think that we should automatically assume the user of a consumer device is tech savvy. With a device like the iPhone I think it?s important for Apple to work out the logistics of how backgrounds apps run and not jsut let them loose until the RAM is filled.
For example, Apple could allow for 2 apps to run in the background, but only apps that meet RAM, CPU and internet bandwidth guidelines. This would help maintain the usability of your foreground app and help developers since they know the maximum ?damage? the background apps could inflict on the system at large.
This could be turned on via the Settings » Background Apps where apps that have met the requirements by app are listed and where you get to toggle On the apps you wish to allow. This may include the iPod app as it does seem to take a toll on the system, at least with the first two iPhones.
Two know which iPhones are running in the background the Menu Bar could have a small icon to the left of the battery indictor or other icons on that side denoting a [B} for background apps running. Or a small icon of the app that is running in the background, though that may be too small to represent. The icon on the Home Page that is set for background app running could get a special badge or have the icon change slightly but noticeably so it?s easy to see.
But how would you kill the app if you no longer wanted it to run in the background? Would you have to go into settings to toggle it to Off?
Just some ideas, that was off the top of my head for how Apple could do it safely for their less-than-technical crowd. I?d love to hear some better examples.
Wanting to take signal strength out of the equation idealizes the situation, which just doesn't make much sense.
On the contrary! It makes total sense to make sure that the signal strength is the same for both phones.
If the Sprint signal was stronger (which seems to be suggested by the one iPhone going to Edge) then how can you determine which one is faster? The answer is you can't.