Major architectural changes suggested by iPhone 2,1

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Comments

  • Reply 61 of 91
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ncee View Post


    [...]



    An Apple nanoPhone, nPhone, iPhone jr., little iPhone, iphone shuffle (hell I don't care what they call it) for $99.00 with no subsidies to AT&T, NO hidden costs or contracts, just a nice small working PHONE. We ALL know this would sell like hot cakes.



    Skip



    Most worthless product suggestion I've ever read.



    If you want "just a nice small working PHONE," go buy one at your local Nokia kiosk.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by hobBIT View Post


    In many cases background processes don't actually need to be running in the background (and be draining the battery).

    What is often enough is to merely suspend them, pausing them until the user comes back to them.



    Many of the examples that Palm was showing on its Pre were mere suspension, e.g. while in an email software going to the address book to look someone up and then go back to the emailer. That emailer doesn't need to be using any CPU cycles or battery life while the user is in the address book application.



    Yet it is a matter of memory. Perhaps that's the issue on the iPhone. Paging applications in and out of memory takes time and might annoy the user if it's not done fast enough.





    I understand and mostly support Apple's decision not to have processes running in the background on a device that's battery juice sensitive.

    Yet I do not understand why they can't simply suspend processes - unless it's a memory issue.



    More than likely, it is a memory issue. The iPhone frequently crashes during the operation of one program alone (e.g., Safari).



    An upgrade in RAM and graphics processing should do the trick, though.



    If Apple is to stay at the head of the crowd, they really need to display the capacity to do as much as the Pre and more.



    I'd like to see . . .
    • A way of searching the entire system of the machine, akin to OSX's Spotlight and the searching features displayed on the Pre.

    • The ability to bring up a list of applications without having to hit the Home button every time.

    • The ability to multi-task -- or as hobBIT aptly put it, suspending programs while you run off to do something else on the phone.

    • The ability to view all running applications, similar to hitting F3 on the Mac, and similar to viewing multiple webpages -- something I feel the Pre just utterly and unabashedly ripped off from Apple.

    The Pre has, in a very obvious way, ripped off many of the ingenious ideas of the iPhone development team and applied them in different areas.



    But that makes me come off sounding a sore loser. After all, modern art isn't "art" because it's good -- it's "art" because the artist did it first.



    Basically, the Pre needs to be put in its place, while Apple continues to add on to its cache of features for the iPhone. If the next incarnation of the iPhone can't at least match these features, it could get ugly.
  • Reply 62 of 91
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post


    Playing music is just one thing this small computer can do.



    Your problem isn't negativity towards the rest of us but rather a narrow view of what that hand held device is capable of. You see an MP3 player with a cell phone attached. I see a hand held computer that has a huge number of uses.





    See all the answers above. Your problem is comprehension of what other do with iPhone, you need to work away from that mentality of its an MP3 player and I don't understand. You have to put in a little effort, which you seem reluctant to do, to understand the devices almost unlimited capability.





    Dave



    Actually my view is based on what the current model (not jailbroken) is currently capable of. Are there plenty of features and capabilities I'd love to see? Yes. Unfortunately I can only take the device for what it is now and not what I hope it to be. If future models would take more advantage of a larger flash drive then I'd be all for it too, but that's not what my response was based on. The original poster mentioned he was holding out on buying because he specifically wanted a 64GB flash drive for his music and so my question was based on that.



    So unless I'm missing something... what other things do you currently do on it outside of the official 3rd party apps, Safari web browser, iTunes media player for music and video and mail app?



    I do appreciate the feedback.
  • Reply 63 of 91
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Shookster View Post


    Four reasons:

    1. I travel a lot and sometimes I will be months away from my computer.

    2. I really like Genius but when I use it with my 8 GB iPod Touch it is terrible. It very rarely returns any results at all.

    3. It's a great backup. You can't ever have too many backups.

    4. I already have a Touch so I have the most of the features already (except for the phone which I have separately). So if I am to upgrade to an iPhone, I want it to be something that meets my needs better than my existing player and phone. I don't buy new products for incremental updates - if there are changes, I want them to be easily noticeable.



    Makes sense. Thanks for the response!
  • Reply 64 of 91
    tenobelltenobell Posts: 7,014member
    From what we've been shown the Pre accomplishes multi-tasking by actually being less advanced than the iPhone. The Pre is not designed or intended to run apps as sophisticated as the iPhone. The Pre will handle less demanding code.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sacrilegend View Post


    Most worthless product suggestion I've ever read.

    If Apple is to stay at the head of the crowd, they really need to display the capacity to do as much as the Pre and more.



    Basically, the Pre needs to be put in its place, while Apple continues to add on to its cache of features for the iPhone. If the next incarnation of the iPhone can't at least match these features, it could get ugly.



  • Reply 65 of 91
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post


    The lack of use multitasking is a fundamental weakness. Related to that is the lack of RAM space for user apps. That is two things real quick off the top of the head. It is not difficult to add to the list with things like battery life and such.



    Anyway you look at it the current iPhone is just a rev one product. It has all sorts of issues that need to be addressed, some of them fundamental as you say.





    Honestly I expect the current form factor iPhone to get a modest boost in speed and capability. But I also expect a speed demon for those that need it.



    As to multi-core that is not as far fetched as you might think. Depending on who you talk to it has been estimated that there are 4 to 6 ARM cores in the device now. Of course these are embedded in the different support chips and stuff in the device and not in any way usable by the OS for user apps. What a multi-core speed demon chip offers Apple is the ability to replace some of those external processors with much higher performance processors that also can execute user code. This might not mean as clean a speed up in operations as you might expect from going dual core or more but it makes for a tremendously more versatile machine. The reality is those processors have to run some extra system code but that is not always a significant load. So you get more CPU resources for a mix of user code.



    Dave



    That's not a good idea. Those other processors run things like the baseband, which is hard-hard-realtime control where every cycle counts. Other cores are integrated into existing chip designs with similar limitations.



    Symmetrical, shared memory multiple core processors make no sense. They are much more complex (cache, bus) taking more room and more power and there just isn't any need for more processing power. RAM may be limited and they can upgrade that. If they need better graphics performance they will use graphics hardware. I cant think of any pressing reason to add general purpose computing power. Yes it would be nice, no they're not going to let anything (especially 3rd party software) use up the battery.
  • Reply 66 of 91
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by m2002brian View Post


    One would wonder:

    Why then, don't they let background processes run on the touch?



    Because they just couldn't get it to work properly or efficiently in the time they had. It was their first go and they were focusing on the user experience and probably had no plans for 3rd party software. It may be that they fix it in the next rev, seeing as they seem to have dropped the push thing.



    The fact is hardware is easy and software is hard. Knocking out the iPhone hardware would have been a push over, getting the software to run properly will take years. Anyone remember the introduction of OS X?
  • Reply 67 of 91
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by TenoBell View Post


    From what we've been shown the Pre accomplishes multi-tasking by actually being less advanced than the iPhone. The Pre is not designed or intended to run apps as sophisticated as the iPhone. The Pre will handle less demanding code.



    That's the most meaningless reply I've every heard. You really are bending over backwards to kiss Apple's arse there. The other product runs "less advanced" software that's why it's worse than Apple although Apple doesn't have the feature? Less advanced in what respect? Apple should remove even more features to make it's software even more advanced! That'll show 'em! Sheesh.
  • Reply 68 of 91
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post


    It's not storage memory but Ram. They both have 128MB Ram and I think they don't use virtual memory or it uses it in a way that still doesn't allow you to exceed 128MB.



    The problem is understandable because the devices run a variant of OS X, which wasn't originally meant for mobile use and runs terribly on desktops with less than 512MB. They split the development a while back but they probably still need to work out some of the desktop bloat that the mobile end doesn't need.



    It still doesn't prevent copy/paste though because that process would need a few k of Ram and even if the buffer needed more, they could use the flash drive for that.



    If the next incarnation of the iphone had 256MB - 512MB Ram it would help a great deal to get multi-tasking apps but I think they really just need to optimize the apps and OS better. For a mobile device, 128MB Ram should be plenty. If the next iphone OS (v3) has Snow leopard improvements, maybe it will reduce application and OS memory footprint.



    OS X is Unix. Its code base is from the time when memories were much much smaller. It really isn't a big factor, even with the additional bloat from the desktop, they just strip it off. The core is lean, as it should be.
  • Reply 69 of 91
    tenobelltenobell Posts: 7,014member
    Do you understand the software that is used to build iPhone apps and the software to build Pre apps? Do you understand the difference between the two, or know that their is a difference?





    Quote:
    Originally Posted by merdhead View Post


    That's the most meaningless reply I've every heard. You really are bending over backwards to kiss Apple's arse there. The other product runs "less advanced" software that's why it's worse than Apple although Apple doesn't have the feature? Less advanced in what respect? Apple should remove even more features to make it's software even more advanced! That'll show 'em! Sheesh.



  • Reply 70 of 91
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by merdhead View Post


    That's not a good idea. Those other processors run things like the baseband, which is hard-hard-realtime control where every cycle counts. Other cores are integrated into existing chip designs with similar limitations.



    That simply isn't an issue. Qualcomm even has documentation showing a dual core chip running one realtime OS along with the user OS.



    In any event the trick isn't to replace every embedded processor but to significantly reduce the number that don't contribute to the performance in user space. The other thing to realize is that in an advance SMP you will have very fast processors that will effectively much faster than the embedded processors they are replacing.

    Quote:



    Symmetrical, shared memory multiple core processors make no sense.



    It makes all the sense in the world. There are advantages in having everything working in one memory space for one. Two; multiple processors allow for a far better performance profile for user space and more importantly are a low power choice. SMP is just the avenue to improving the iPhone innthe era of very high integration.

    Quote:

    They are much more complex (cache, bus) taking more room and more power and there just isn't any need for more processing power.



    The problem is all of the above is the wrong perspective. In many ways a true SMP system would be less complex. That considering both the software and hardware.



    In any event your arguement that more processing power is required is not valid at all. I can see my IPhone take a performance hit everytime an E-Mail comes in. That while browsing the web on a limited web browser. In this case more RAM would certainly help some but it won't deal with the fact that the processor is a significant part of the problem.

    Quote:

    RAM may be limited and they can upgrade that. If they need better graphics performance they will use graphics hardware. I cant think of any pressing reason to add general purpose computing power. Yes it would be nice, no they're not going to let anything (especially 3rd party software) use up the battery.



    Just because you don't see the need doesn't mean the rest of us haven't.



    As to third party software it is really up to the user what he wants to run. Frankly if Apple gave a damn about the battery the wouldn't be selling games on line. Let's face it nothing kills the battery faster than a game. I see this point of view offfered up all the time and frankly what is currently happening with app store doesn't support the idea. Battery life is a user responsibility!







    Dave
  • Reply 71 of 91
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by TenoBell View Post


    Do you understand the software that is used to build iPhone apps and the software to build Pre apps? Do you understand the difference between the two, or know that their is a difference?



    It doesn't make that much difference. Both deliver applications to the user, the Pre has multitasking. Saying that Apple's is more advanced and therefore does less is not a convincing argument.



    But let me spell it out for you since you're obviously not too bright:



    - Multitasking is an advanced feature

    - Products with advanced features are more advanced

    - therefore the iPhone cannot be more advanced while it is missing advanced features



    Those advanced features you're referring to are probably things like "prettiness" and "animation" or the so-called "multitouch" which is a term Apple made up to make their touchscreen sound impressive.



    Or can you name the advanced features? Then we can argue it on its merits, instead of your specious and empty "you don't know anything" argument. Or are you just an apologist for the products short comings like most of the people in this forum are?
  • Reply 72 of 91
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post


    That simply isn't an issue. Qualcomm even has documentation showing a dual core chip running one realtime OS along with the user OS.



    In any event the trick isn't to replace every embedded processor but to significantly reduce the number that don't contribute to the performance in user space. The other thing to realize is that in an advance SMP you will have very fast processors that will effectively much faster than the embedded processors they are replacing.



    It makes all the sense in the world. There are advantages in having everything working in one memory space for one. Two; multiple processors allow for a far better performance profile for user space and more importantly are a low power choice. SMP is just the avenue to improving the iPhone innthe era of very high integration.



    The problem is all of the above is the wrong perspective. In many ways a true SMP system would be less complex. That considering both the software and hardware.



    In any event your arguement that more processing power is required is not valid at all. I can see my IPhone take a performance hit everytime an E-Mail comes in. That while browsing the web on a limited web browser. In this case more RAM would certainly help some but it won't deal with the fact that the processor is a significant part of the problem.





    Just because you don't see the need doesn't mean the rest of us haven't.



    As to third party software it is really up to the user what he wants to run. Frankly if Apple gave a damn about the battery the wouldn't be selling games on line. Let's face it nothing kills the battery faster than a game. I see this point of view offfered up all the time and frankly what is currently happening with app store doesn't support the idea. Battery life is a user responsibility!







    Dave



    Hmm. Is this a low-end Quallcomm chip? Can you point me to that setup that manages a HDUPA baseband with all the extras?



    But generally, you're giving me a philosophical argument, and my argument is just as philosophical, but you're missing my point. Technically, all is possible given certain trade offs, but those trade offs are the issue. Of course I'll love to have my phone be a speed demon with multiple cores with me taking responsibility for battery usage, but Apple is doing a design for the everyman, and they want to use all the features anytime they want. You don't have to look far to find people whining about battery performance and form factor.



    Now, given a very tight size, battery, manufacturing complexity and cost budget, what choice are you going to make? I think those that use existing designs and integrate ICs while constantly driving down power usage will win out, given the goals that Apple has set. We can see this clearly in the evolution of the iPod line.



    I'd love to have what you describe, and obviously so would you. Would Apple design it that way? Unlikely. Would anyone design it, targeting essentially what is a nerd market? Possibly, but the machine would have to do something new and special, not just be faster, otherwise it wouldn't have the chance to spread into the wider market and it would not be worth the risk.



    You can fantasise, but reality is much harsher.
  • Reply 73 of 91
    tenobelltenobell Posts: 7,014member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by merdhead View Post


    It doesn't make that much difference. Both deliver applications to the user, the Pre has multitasking. Saying that Apple's is more advanced and therefore does less is not a convincing argument.



    That is why I asked you if you knew the difference between the Pre's development tools and the iPhone's development tools. Its pretty clear you don't. You really should not offer an opinion on the matter unless you do understand.



    Quote:

    But let me spell it out for you since you're obviously not too bright:



    - Multitasking is an advanced feature

    - Products with advanced features are more advanced

    - therefore the iPhone cannot be more advanced while it is missing advanced features



    You say I'm not too bright an then offer this flawed bit of logic? No this is not how things work.



    Multi-tasking is not an advanced feature. The iPhone does multi-task but its not offered as an API for developers to use.



    Quote:

    Or can you name the advanced features? Then we can argue it on its merits, instead of your specious and empty "you don't know anything" argument. Or are you just an apologist for the products short comings like most of the people in this forum are?



    The Pre's development tools are HTML,CSS,javascript with some propretary API's for the Pre's hardware and services. HTML/CSS/javascript are the basic tools of websites and web apps on the iPhone. Its a lightweight and limited technology that is not demanding of the phones limited resources.



    The iPhone's development tools are Objective-C with OS X based API's: Quartz, OS X Kernel extensions, Core Services, Open-GL ES, Core Image, Open AL, Core Animation. These tools allow developers to create desktop class apps that are demanding of the phones limited resources.
  • Reply 74 of 91
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,310moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by TenoBell View Post


    The Pre's development tools are HTML,CSS,javascript with some propretary API's for the Pre's hardware and services. HTML/CSS/javascript are the basic tools of websites and web apps on the iPhone.



    I'd also like to see what their SDK comes out like. One thing about Apple's SDK is Interface Builder for drag and drop interfaces. If developers have to hand-code code inputs, stylesheets, floats and so on like for website development, it's just going a very poor set of tools.



    Now maybe it's the case that Palm is going after the simple stuff and trying to do it well. The stuff that people generally use a phone for but if they don't expand on it, it will eventually limit the device from doing very important tasks. Like controlling a sniper rifle:



    http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/20/i...r-the-cult-of/



    For a future version of the iphone, I'd like to see dual core chips. They just help so much when it comes to load-balancing. When doing computational stuff, single cores just choke.



    Intel Moorestown might be a good option but the x86 platform probably doesn't matter because OS X desktop apps just won't really be possible unless Apple make a truly resolution independent UI (beyond just physical scaling - something like you get with CSS) with Cocoa Touch in OS X.



    It seems clear that given their investment in PA Semi, Intel are out of the picture though. The ARM Cortex A9 would be too late for Apple to introduce an iphone update at WWDC so what I'd expect from their investment is something on the order of the Cortex A9 MP but 6 months ahead of everyone else.
  • Reply 75 of 91
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    [Shameless plug]. What is your opinion of video recording on the iPhone 3G? I tested a video recording with a heck of a lot of exploding firecrackers:



    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es4lGYvJ5OM&fmt=18



    Feel free to discuss, ignore or flame.



    Will these so-rumoured architectural changes lead to better video/ audio/ photo recording on the new iPhones ??? Curious.
  • Reply 76 of 91
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post


    It's not storage memory but Ram. They both have 128MB Ram and I think they don't use virtual memory or it uses it in a way that still doesn't allow you to exceed 128MB.



    The problem is understandable because the devices run a variant of OS X, which wasn't originally meant for mobile use and runs terribly on desktops with less than 512MB. They split the development a while back but they probably still need to work out some of the desktop bloat that the mobile end doesn't need.



    It still doesn't prevent copy/paste though because that process would need a few k of Ram and even if the buffer needed more, they could use the flash drive for that.



    If the next incarnation of the iphone had 256MB - 512MB Ram it would help a great deal to get multi-tasking apps but I think they really just need to optimize the apps and OS better. For a mobile device, 128MB Ram should be plenty. If the next iphone OS (v3) has Snow leopard improvements, maybe it will reduce application and OS memory footprint.



    Does that mean only the new iPhone can multitask?
  • Reply 77 of 91
    tenobelltenobell Posts: 7,014member
    The iPhone has always been able to multi-task. The phones multi-tasking ability is not open to third party developers.



    If you are looking at a website in Safari and an SMS message pops up, that is multi-tasking



    If you are playing a video game and the phone rings with a call, that is multi-tasking.



    When the phone dings with an email message, that is multi-tasking.



    If you listen to a song from iTunes while typing an email, that is multi-tasking.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by iamlegend View Post


    Does that mean only the new iPhone can multitask?



  • Reply 78 of 91
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,310moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by iamlegend View Post


    Does that mean only the new iPhone can multitask?



    I think that only a new iphone will be allowed to multitask 3rd party apps unless they significantly optimize the system to allow the older models to do the same.



    I think they'll have to optimize the system as it would mean maintaining two sets of updates and some apps wouldn't run on older models such as apps that choose to run a daemon like maybe twitter.



    I actually think that Apple could get round the issue of no background apps by just offering a single daemon app that 3rd party apps run code through. Apple would restrict the CPU and memory of this daemon to maybe 5% CPU and 5MB Ram but it would have queued tasks to perform. Only notification tasks would update in real-time, every other task would store data in a disk cache and then execute when the relevant app required it.
  • Reply 79 of 91
    nofeernofeer Posts: 2,427member
    could that be the way apple will allow "voice dialing"
  • Reply 80 of 91
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by merdhead View Post


    Hmm. Is this a low-end Quallcomm chip? Can you point me to that setup that manages a HDUPA baseband with all the extras?



    If you truly want to know what is up and coming in the electronics world you need to look into things for your self. It is important to know though that current ARM processors are built on trailing semiconductor processes. There is a huge amount of potential for SOC that haven't even been explored by cell phone makers.



    Quote:

    But generally, you're giving me a philosophical argument, and my argument is just as philosophical, but you're missing my point. Technically, all is possible given certain trade offs, but those trade offs are the issue.



    Not even close, my arguements are based on what is possible in the near future. Philosophical argments have nothing to do with it. The reality is future systems will be able to offer better performance at a much lower power usage.

    Quote:

    Of course I'll love to have my phone be a speed demon with multiple cores with me taking responsibility for battery usage, but Apple is doing a design for the everyman, and they want to use all the features anytime they want. You don't have to look far to find people whining about battery performance and form factor.



    Well first you can have better battery performance along with improved system performance. That in a nut shell is what the new ARM tech promises.



    As to form factor, that is not something that can even be brought into the discussion as there are hundreds of alternative smart phones to choose from.

    Quote:

    Now, given a very tight size, battery, manufacturing complexity and cost budget, what choice are you going to make? I think those that use existing designs and integrate ICs while constantly driving down power usage will win out, given the goals that Apple has set. We can see this clearly in the evolution of the iPod line.



    Clearly you have issues digesting what has happened with the iPod line as they have continually improved the line up as technology has advanced. They didn't do that by using established chips but rather getting the freshes tech from the component manufactures. Often Apple is the first to get this new tech, sometimes for an exclusive period.

    Quote:



    I'd love to have what you describe, and obviously so would you. Would Apple design it that way? Unlikely. Would anyone design it, targeting essentially what is a nerd market?



    Clearly you don't know or understand the market. This is not for the nerd market at all. It is however for a market that has a limited tolerance for the current iPhone OS.

    Quote:

    Possibly, but the machine would have to do something new and special, not just be faster, otherwise it wouldn't have the chance to spread into the wider market and it would not be worth the risk.



    You can fantasise, but reality is much harsher.



    I would have to suggest this is not a fantasy at all. First, a new SOC could offer up a consderable speed up to the current iPhone while keeping or even lowering it's power profile. That wouldn't be the high performance unit that I'm hoping for but it would deal with the current problems on the iPhone.



    I'm not sure if you read your postings after the fact but they do have a touch of a Luddite quality to them. It is almost as if you are saying that Apple can't improve the iPhone because it has hit some sort of brick wall. That isn't the case at all, Apple can improve battery life, performance and lower the price all at once. It is what Moores law is all about.



    Dave
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