It always amazes me how the "Us" are always better then "Thems" and all you need to do is pick a team and call them better. These are tools. I like chocolate and you like vanilla, so you get what you want and I'll do the same. The iPhone is really cool if the features make sense for your work/play style and the same for Android. The two products are very different in how they do what they do but they are only better for each persons taste. Change is a constant and both platforms will continue to improve, I myself like them both for different reasons and I am excited to see what each "path" learns from these early models. Enjoy the ride, you don't really want the destination.
Android is for the mature smartphone user. Elegant, Intuitive and a work horse that you can still have fun with.
Well go have fun then
The vast majority of users, imo, do not share your burning desire for unlimited multi-tasking smartphones. Just how many things do you need to do at once on a phone, anyway? As the article states, more capability can be worked in, due to the underlying OS. And hardware always gets better. In the meantime, I appreciate the BENEFITS of the limited multitasking model. Means the phone works for us "children", and it's pretty damn important to me that a phone can be relied upon to do boring things like, well, place and receive telephone calls. Even if it does mean that I can't play "pocket doom" with a stock ticker and run BOINC in the background.
You mean to tell me you use your phone FIRST as a phone. I thought we were supposed to use it like a computer than just so happens to have a phone built in. Never mind we've never in the history of human kind had the power AND usability of the iPhone all in our pockets. Just look at the train it started and guess who's still running the show.
We have become so conditioned to our power outlet and Ethernet port that somehow people think this mobile computing is supposed to replicate desktop computing. It's not going to now, and probably never will. That's where I think people need to step back and realize that they're complaining about things they wouldn't have even thought of HAD IT NOT BEEN FOR APPLE. Nobody cared about Multi-tasking on a phone until you couldn't do it on an iPhone. Nobody cared about what they couldn't do until they couldn't do it on an iPhone. That's a lot of expectation for a product that has done everything it has said it could do and very well I must add.
That's where I think people need to step back and realize that they're complaining about things they wouldn't have even thought of HAD IT NOT BEEN FOR APPLE. Nobody cared about Multi-tasking on a phone until you couldn't do it on an iPhone. Nobody cared about what they couldn't do until they couldn't do it on an iPhone. That's a lot of expectation for a product that has done everything it has said it could do and very well I must add.
Citrix or my Bloomberg Investor/Trader app where I WANT major security checks on program startup (and timeouts when inactive too long). But a PITA for a quick out-and-back, even if just to answer the phone.
And every single app that you might want to pause while you ask Shazam to catch what you're hearing on a Plain Oldfashioned Radio.
Those are look like good examples, including the person you replied to, but I do hav a couple questions.
What is the security check app doing? If it's just sending a message when there is a problem with a program startup or a timeout couldn't that be bet served with the push notifcatuon server? This is the ideal way to use IMs which are just occasional messages.
How would you implement this. We now have a list of 6 apps out of 150k that would warrant backgrounding, surely having every app run in the background becomes pointless. I don't need Shazam running in the background when I'm done using it, yet the only method presented seems to be an all-or-nothing model for background apps.
What about my puzzle game apps don't need to run in the background either since they save what I've completed even if i haven't finished. I know that, you know that and most people on this forum surely know that, but the average person doesn't even know RAM stands for and Apple isn't going to risk convoluting it's system and weakning th user experience because the few people that want Apple to make the well designed products that are as open as Linux without being as crappy as linux.
It's just not going to happen the way Android has fooolishly done it. Intelligent backgrounding or no backgrounding at all. There is even a poster here claiming backgrouning would be easily understood by all consumers who didn't know that you could press the home button to access other apps while on a call. If that kind of mental block can occur then what would happen if every app you open starts running in the background. It's just not a good model for a consumer device.
You think it's so easy to create a new paradigm from scratch yet only iPhone OS has a complete copy/paste setup. Not Android. Not WebOS. Not BB. Not WinMo.
If the developer who made the first 3rd-party app with copy/paste acknoledges the undertaking then why can't you?
PS: Until Android's copy/paste is as good as the iPhone's, until the same speed HW can best the iPhone in actual performance (1GHz Nexus One gets owned by 600MHz 3GS), and until the multi-touch interface can track as well a the iPhone don't talk about who is "ahead of the crowd" because the answer is not Android. If this were 1985 you'd be calling the GUI and mouse a silly fad mpg suited for real users.
I completely agree that the iPhone's general copy/paste is very good. But, where I need it most, in TextFields, it's faster on the Android with the long press. Do you seriously think that the iPhone performs better than the 1Ghz Snapdragon phones? At the moment the iPhone is ahead in a few things (especially as a media device), but lagging substantially behind the Android. There's a good chance that the next phone will catch up with the Android (and even go beyond). But make no mistake, it is now playing catch up.
I used the iPhone. I switched to the Android. There are things that are good in both phones and I appreciate both. There are things that are bad in both phones and I'm aware of both. To turn a blind eye to them and defend them is exactly why one gets a reputation of a fanboy (on both sides).
Perhaps other handset vendors should stop focusing on making their spec sheet better and focus more on making the phone more efficient at using the available resources.
Hey, I've had MMS on my iPhone since June last year from the first day OS 3 was introduced, haven't used it email works so much better and it costs less too.
A keychain LED torch from a $2 shop is comparable to most camera phone flashes with their range of <1 metre (yard).
Quote:
Originally Posted by TEKSTUD
Right and why so long for MMS and a frkn flash for a mobile camera already???????????????
Perhaps other handset vendors should stop focusing on making their spec sheet better and focus more on making the phone more efficient at using the available resources.
Excellent points and an interseting article. Thanks.
Hey, I've had MMS on my iPhone since June last year from the first day OS 3 was introduced, haven't used it email works so much better and it costs less too.
So how much does it cost you to send an email? How do you send one of these emails to someone that doesn't have an email account? MMS is a very big industry, it is a prime example of Apple of caving into pressure.
The only multi-tasking that I hope iPhone OS 4.0 will support is some way for me to send a simple SMS message without leaving my app (If would even require multi-tasking??) Anyone else feel its annoying to go in and out of an app during a text conversation? Oh yeah, and I REALLY NEED to listen to Pandora while I play Doodle Jump ya know? My iPod music just wont do!
Perhaps other handset vendors should stop focusing on making their spec sheet better and focus more on making the phone more efficient at using the available resources.
I don't know anything about 3D. As that site claims, it's possible that there could be improvements made. Maybe it's because I don't play games, but I really couldn't see the difference between the two except that the Nexus One looked more vibrant than the iPhone. Most reviews talk about how well Google Earth runs on the Nexus One. The scrolling on the Nexus One is faster. Browser is faster. As it should be. So it's not just specs.
I don't know anything about 3D. As that site claims, it's possible that there could be improvements made.
This is why he can make the assertion that the Android OS is still behind the iPhone OS in some significant areas. 3-D does matter a lot for a large segment of the App population.
The Nexus one just got multi-touch gestures for apps. So Android is still filling in a lot of functionality just as the iPhone did...missing cut and paste was less of a big deal than missing multitouch gestures IMHO.
Likewise for hardware the iPhone touch sensor has been shown to be better in some tests.
Wigglies are bad. This is a key (heh) factor for reduced user input errors when using a phone.
I think from the comments on the page, it should be plainly obvious that most droid owners can't reproduce this. And more importantly, the very premise of this test is questionable. The key is whether you actually get more errors while touching the Android compared to the iPhone. And my personal experience is yes - while scrolling. But only while scrolling. And I think that is most likely because (I think) that a selection event is fired when scrolling.
I think from the comments on the page, it should be plainly obvious that most droid owners can't reproduce this. And more importantly, the very premise of this test is questionable. The key is whether you actually get more errors while touching the Android compared to the iPhone. And my personal experience is yes - while scrolling. But only while scrolling. And I think that is most likely because (I think) that a selection event is fired when scrolling.
It's more than just scrolling. The iPhone's touchscreen is much accurate all around. You can use this forum as a test. Don't zoom in and then try to press a specific link on the page. The accuracy is much better on the iPhone. I found the G1, Droid and Pre to be frustrating after so much time using the iPhone. Hopefully they get things worked out in the future as the consensus is the algorithm, not the HW.
The first is limited resources. Mobile devices have a finite amount of RAM and CPU power, so allowing multiple apps to be loaded and running all at once introduces new problems related to the mobile device's performance and battery life. It also increases the system's complexity, as users will now be forced to monitor and manage the processes running in the background.
Why are writers so uninterested in how stuff works? What limited resources? 3G --- not 3G[S] --- easily plays internet radio and loads maps for Google Earth simultaneously...
So how much does it cost you to send an email? How do you send one of these emails to someone that doesn't have an email account? MMS is a very big industry, it is a prime example of Apple of caving into pressure.
you do know you can email almost any phone via there MMS or SMS email (AND they can reply, it goes straight to your email). I do it all the time on the computer because it's easier than using a tiny phone for long text conversations.
I had suspicions that AppleInsider was a very biased website. This article has confirmed it. The author is just making excuses for Apple rather than using a realist's analytical framework.
Duh! Ofcourse we must distinguish between true-application multitasking and system multitasking. And ofcourse system multitasking is a bottomline feature in all interactive OSes. This distinction is suggested in this article. However, the design of the iPhone's OS centers around the later because of design constraints (namely processing power limitations in the earlier iPhones as well as memory and power consumption constraints). The user-experience was cleverly designed to account for these constraints. The introduction of Apple's new multicore SoC A4 has introduced a dynamism that the iPhone did not and does not enjoy. If the hardware improves, so does the software OS. Android was built with extensibility and scalability in mind. That caused it to suffer performance bottlenecks in its initial offerings. The future holds more promise for Android's model.
you do know you can email almost any phone via there MMS or SMS email (AND they can reply, it goes straight to your email). I do it all the time on the computer because it's easier than using a tiny phone for long text conversations.
Comments
Android is for the mature smartphone user. Elegant, Intuitive and a work horse that you can still have fun with.
Well go have fun then
The vast majority of users, imo, do not share your burning desire for unlimited multi-tasking smartphones. Just how many things do you need to do at once on a phone, anyway? As the article states, more capability can be worked in, due to the underlying OS. And hardware always gets better. In the meantime, I appreciate the BENEFITS of the limited multitasking model. Means the phone works for us "children", and it's pretty damn important to me that a phone can be relied upon to do boring things like, well, place and receive telephone calls. Even if it does mean that I can't play "pocket doom" with a stock ticker and run BOINC in the background.
We have become so conditioned to our power outlet and Ethernet port that somehow people think this mobile computing is supposed to replicate desktop computing. It's not going to now, and probably never will. That's where I think people need to step back and realize that they're complaining about things they wouldn't have even thought of HAD IT NOT BEEN FOR APPLE. Nobody cared about Multi-tasking on a phone until you couldn't do it on an iPhone. Nobody cared about what they couldn't do until they couldn't do it on an iPhone. That's a lot of expectation for a product that has done everything it has said it could do and very well I must add.
That's where I think people need to step back and realize that they're complaining about things they wouldn't have even thought of HAD IT NOT BEEN FOR APPLE. Nobody cared about Multi-tasking on a phone until you couldn't do it on an iPhone. Nobody cared about what they couldn't do until they couldn't do it on an iPhone. That's a lot of expectation for a product that has done everything it has said it could do and very well I must add.
Brilliant!
Easy to add more scenarios, too:
Those are look like good examples, including the person you replied to, but I do hav a couple questions.
What is the security check app doing? If it's just sending a message when there is a problem with a program startup or a timeout couldn't that be bet served with the push notifcatuon server? This is the ideal way to use IMs which are just occasional messages.
How would you implement this. We now have a list of 6 apps out of 150k that would warrant backgrounding, surely having every app run in the background becomes pointless. I don't need Shazam running in the background when I'm done using it, yet the only method presented seems to be an all-or-nothing model for background apps.
What about my puzzle game apps don't need to run in the background either since they save what I've completed even if i haven't finished. I know that, you know that and most people on this forum surely know that, but the average person doesn't even know RAM stands for and Apple isn't going to risk convoluting it's system and weakning th user experience because the few people that want Apple to make the well designed products that are as open as Linux without being as crappy as linux.
It's just not going to happen the way Android has fooolishly done it. Intelligent backgrounding or no backgrounding at all. There is even a poster here claiming backgrouning would be easily understood by all consumers who didn't know that you could press the home button to access other apps while on a call. If that kind of mental block can occur then what would happen if every app you open starts running in the background. It's just not a good model for a consumer device.
You think it's so easy to create a new paradigm from scratch yet only iPhone OS has a complete copy/paste setup. Not Android. Not WebOS. Not BB. Not WinMo.
If the developer who made the first 3rd-party app with copy/paste acknoledges the undertaking then why can't you?
Right and why so long for MMS and a frkn flash for a mobile camera already???????????????
PS: Until Android's copy/paste is as good as the iPhone's, until the same speed HW can best the iPhone in actual performance (1GHz Nexus One gets owned by 600MHz 3GS), and until the multi-touch interface can track as well a the iPhone don't talk about who is "ahead of the crowd" because the answer is not Android. If this were 1985 you'd be calling the GUI and mouse a silly fad mpg suited for real users.
I completely agree that the iPhone's general copy/paste is very good. But, where I need it most, in TextFields, it's faster on the Android with the long press. Do you seriously think that the iPhone performs better than the 1Ghz Snapdragon phones? At the moment the iPhone is ahead in a few things (especially as a media device), but lagging substantially behind the Android. There's a good chance that the next phone will catch up with the Android (and even go beyond). But make no mistake, it is now playing catch up.
I used the iPhone. I switched to the Android. There are things that are good in both phones and I appreciate both. There are things that are bad in both phones and I'm aware of both. To turn a blind eye to them and defend them is exactly why one gets a reputation of a fanboy (on both sides).
Do you seriously think that the iPhone performs better than the 1Ghz Snapdragon phones?
Yes. Case in point.Perhaps other handset vendors should stop focusing on making their spec sheet better and focus more on making the phone more efficient at using the available resources.
A keychain LED torch from a $2 shop is comparable to most camera phone flashes with their range of <1 metre (yard).
Right and why so long for MMS and a frkn flash for a mobile camera already???????????????
Yes. Case in point.Perhaps other handset vendors should stop focusing on making their spec sheet better and focus more on making the phone more efficient at using the available resources.
Excellent points and an interseting article. Thanks.
Hey, I've had MMS on my iPhone since June last year from the first day OS 3 was introduced, haven't used it email works so much better and it costs less too.
So how much does it cost you to send an email? How do you send one of these emails to someone that doesn't have an email account? MMS is a very big industry, it is a prime example of Apple of caving into pressure.
/s
Yes. Case in point.Perhaps other handset vendors should stop focusing on making their spec sheet better and focus more on making the phone more efficient at using the available resources.
I don't know anything about 3D. As that site claims, it's possible that there could be improvements made. Maybe it's because I don't play games, but I really couldn't see the difference between the two except that the Nexus One looked more vibrant than the iPhone. Most reviews talk about how well Google Earth runs on the Nexus One. The scrolling on the Nexus One is faster. Browser is faster. As it should be. So it's not just specs.
I don't know anything about 3D. As that site claims, it's possible that there could be improvements made.
This is why he can make the assertion that the Android OS is still behind the iPhone OS in some significant areas. 3-D does matter a lot for a large segment of the App population.
The Nexus one just got multi-touch gestures for apps. So Android is still filling in a lot of functionality just as the iPhone did...missing cut and paste was less of a big deal than missing multitouch gestures IMHO.
Likewise for hardware the iPhone touch sensor has been shown to be better in some tests.
Wigglies are bad. This is a key (heh) factor for reduced user input errors when using a phone.
http://labs.moto.com/diy-touchscreen-analysis/
Wigglies are bad. This is a key (heh) factor for reduced user input errors when using a phone.
http://labs.moto.com/diy-touchscreen-analysis/
I think from the comments on the page, it should be plainly obvious that most droid owners can't reproduce this. And more importantly, the very premise of this test is questionable. The key is whether you actually get more errors while touching the Android compared to the iPhone. And my personal experience is yes - while scrolling. But only while scrolling. And I think that is most likely because (I think) that a selection event is fired when scrolling.
I think from the comments on the page, it should be plainly obvious that most droid owners can't reproduce this. And more importantly, the very premise of this test is questionable. The key is whether you actually get more errors while touching the Android compared to the iPhone. And my personal experience is yes - while scrolling. But only while scrolling. And I think that is most likely because (I think) that a selection event is fired when scrolling.
It's more than just scrolling. The iPhone's touchscreen is much accurate all around. You can use this forum as a test. Don't zoom in and then try to press a specific link on the page. The accuracy is much better on the iPhone. I found the G1, Droid and Pre to be frustrating after so much time using the iPhone. Hopefully they get things worked out in the future as the consensus is the algorithm, not the HW.
The first is limited resources. Mobile devices have a finite amount of RAM and CPU power, so allowing multiple apps to be loaded and running all at once introduces new problems related to the mobile device's performance and battery life. It also increases the system's complexity, as users will now be forced to monitor and manage the processes running in the background.
Why are writers so uninterested in how stuff works? What limited resources? 3G --- not 3G[S] --- easily plays internet radio and loads maps for Google Earth simultaneously...
Resources-tschmesources...
So how much does it cost you to send an email? How do you send one of these emails to someone that doesn't have an email account? MMS is a very big industry, it is a prime example of Apple of caving into pressure.
you do know you can email almost any phone via there MMS or SMS email (AND they can reply, it goes straight to your email). I do it all the time on the computer because it's easier than using a tiny phone for long text conversations.
Carrier \tEmail to MMS and SMS Gateways
Alltel \t[10-digit phone number]@message.alltel.com
Example: [email protected]
AT&T (formerly Cingular) \t[10-digit phone number]@txt.att.net
[10-digit phone number]@mms.att.net (MMS)
[10-digit phone number]@cingularme.com
Example: [email protected]
Boost Mobile \t[10-digit phone number]@myboostmobile.com
Example: [email protected]
Nextel (now Sprint Nextel) \t[10-digit telephone number]@messaging.nextel.com
Example: [email protected]
Sprint PCS (now Sprint Nextel) \t[10-digit phone number]@messaging.sprintpcs.com
[10-digit phone number]@pm.sprint.com (MMS)
Example: [email protected]
T-Mobile \t[10-digit phone number]@tmomail.net
Example: [email protected]
US Cellular \t[10-digit phone number]email.uscc.net (SMS)
[10-digit phone number]@mms.uscc.net (MMS)
Example: [email protected]
Verizon \t[10-digit phone number]@vtext.com
[10-digit phone number]@vzwpix.com (MMS)
Example: [email protected]
Virgin Mobile USA \t[10-digit phone number]@vmobl.com
Example: [email protected]
Source: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/email-to-sms/
Duh! Ofcourse we must distinguish between true-application multitasking and system multitasking. And ofcourse system multitasking is a bottomline feature in all interactive OSes. This distinction is suggested in this article. However, the design of the iPhone's OS centers around the later because of design constraints (namely processing power limitations in the earlier iPhones as well as memory and power consumption constraints). The user-experience was cleverly designed to account for these constraints. The introduction of Apple's new multicore SoC A4 has introduced a dynamism that the iPhone did not and does not enjoy. If the hardware improves, so does the software OS. Android was built with extensibility and scalability in mind. That caused it to suffer performance bottlenecks in its initial offerings. The future holds more promise for Android's model.
you do know you can email almost any phone via there MMS or SMS email (AND they can reply, it goes straight to your email). I do it all the time on the computer because it's easier than using a tiny phone for long text conversations.
[...]
Source: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/email-to-sms/
1) He's not so much into facts as he is into hating on Apple.
2) He's in Australia so he'll likely tell you with acrimony that the US isn't the only country in the world.