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iPhone OS 4.0 Brings Multitasking, Ad Framework For Apps
Low Ranked Craig writes "Apple had an event today to show off the next major update to the iPhone OS. iPhone OS 4.0 should arrive this summer (presumably with a new iPhone) for iPhone and iPod Touch, and in the fall for the iPad. According to Apple the update has more than 1,500 new APIs and 100 new features including the sorely missed multitasking. Other highlights include unified inbox, improved security, support for multiple Exchange accounts, application folders, iBooks, and iAd, an advertising framework for developers to put ads in their applications. The official word from Steve on Flash and Java remains a simple 'No.'" Updated 20100408 22:09 GMT by timothy: Read on for more information, including some bad news if you want to program for the iPhone in C# or Flash CS5.
alphadogg points out some what he calls surprise capabilities targeted at enterprise users and IT departments, including e-mail encryption and "mobile device management."
And CWmike adds more infomation at MacWorld about iAd, which he considers the biggest news in today’s announcement, writing that one way to look at the new advertising hooks "is that Apple can now leverage the App Store/iTunes ‘ecosystem’ lock-in in effect, and deliver to advertisers a huge captive audience."
Finally, binarylarry writes with a look from Daring Fireball at the new user agreement that goes along with 4.0: "Looks like Adobe's release of CS5 with the Flash-to-native compiler has been nixed by Apple's new user agreement: '3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs.'"
And CWmike adds more infomation at MacWorld about iAd, which he considers the biggest news in today’s announcement, writing that one way to look at the new advertising hooks "is that Apple can now leverage the App Store/iTunes ‘ecosystem’ lock-in in effect, and deliver to advertisers a huge captive audience."
Finally, binarylarry writes with a look from Daring Fireball at the new user agreement that goes along with 4.0: "Looks like Adobe's release of CS5 with the Flash-to-native compiler has been nixed by Apple's new user agreement: '3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs.'"
Ads on mobile phone? DO NOT WANT. Unless I get a free phone and free service, but even then I'm not sure if I could tolerate it.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Good to know Apple has their priorities right.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Every time I use an iPhone, I can't help thinking, "if only this had more *ads*." I mean, really, what good is a smart phone without pop-over advertisements?
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Read the article:
Apple looked at thousands of apps to determine what services apps would most need to keep running while in the background. "In iPhone OS 4, we're providing those services as APIs to developers,"
In other words, the iPhone still isn't capable of doing true multitasking, something that other smartphones - well, never lacked.
Instead you're still stuck with only being able to do the things that Apple has decided to allow their sheep the ability to do on Apple's phone - not what the lowly sheep that bought it wishes they could do.
Oh dear, iphone fans won't like this at all. They hate multitasking. They've been very vocal about it. I doubt they'll like the new iphone at all. They'll probably tell everyone that it's crap now :(
Wait a second here. Wasn't the lack of multitasking a feature that made the iPad and iPhone so great? It allowed you to relax and compute!
What are they doing? Why is Apple taking all of the zen out?
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
(or the presumed new iPhone to accompany OS 4.0)
...then yeah, no multitasking for you. Sorry about that.
"I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
Will the current iPhone hardware be able to handle this new OS?
I ended up having to get rid of my original iPhone and get a 3GS because all the OS updates slowed my iPhone down to a crawl for any given operation.
Couple things:
The multitasking method described is essentially identical to the one MS is using, with the process being halted in the background and the potential for it to be freed from memory at any time. The new addition is a background daemon or two that a program can contact to leave bits running while the rest is halted. Sort of a "low power multitasking." This is actually quite clever, and makes me wonder if it isn't using Grand Central closures to keep those bits spinning while the main process is halted.
The task switching method has apparently been cited as looking extremely similar to the way S60 switches. I wouldn't know, but that's pretty funny if true.
All in all, the critical juncture remains for me: The platform has been and will remain extremely closed. That alone is enough to ensure that I will stick with my N900 for the time being, and likely well into the future. I'll put my OS and developer interests behind MeeGo, and encourage openness.
It's their store. If you don't like it, don't buy their device. Or jailbreak it.
I was considering getting an ***LOW INTEREST MORTAGES*** Iphone, but this new ad framework might ***ALL-NATURAL COLONIC CLEANSE*** force me to reconsider. Will ads only be shown when ad-supported apps are running, or ***HOT SLASHDOTTERS WANT TO TALK TO YOU!!!*** will you be interrupted with ads no matter where you are?
Isn't that something even Outlook can't seem to do without setting up multiple email profiles? I find this pretty amusing, actually. ...Sorry, been stuck in Outlook Hell lately and that struck a chord...
I'm not talking about using them as multiple IMAP connections, but rather as native Exchange connections as configured using the Outlook setup wizard...
Never have a philosophy which supports a lack of courage
Now if only iPhone owners could do what they want with the hardware they purchased.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
info direct from apple
TIAEAE!
This disastrous update makes it clear Apple is internally shitting bricks over the iPhone losing market-share and Google's Android exploding in sales, userbase, and developer support.
Desperation lawsuit against HTC.
This pathetic attempt at trying to claim the iPhone can actually multi-task like Android.
The absolutely embarrassingly lame attempt by Jobs to attack Android over porn.
It's just going to keep getting worse with the rate Android is leaving the crappy old iPhone OS behind and the absolute flood of new Android based devices that make the iPhone hardware look like old 1970s pocket calculators in comparison.
Wrong. 3rd-gen iPod Touches (ie, 32GB, 64GB models released in 2009) work also.
Presumably this is due to the lack of the performance/capability of the chipset found in the 2G, 3G iPhones and 1st & 2nd gen iPod Touch.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Because you want to be able to look something up (through your browser, in your mailbox, whatever) while having a conversation on Skype.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Cry a little louder and harder, bitches! We can't hear you from way up here on awesome mountain! What's that? You're mad and are going to form an open committee to discuss ways to retort in a GPL-based, socially pluralistic manner? In three years time, you'll have a shoddily constructed riposte AND a donated-by-Cory handkerchief with which to wipe away your salty tears? Keep debating, pansies! I'll be figuring out a way to put some TRUCK NUTS on my iPad.
A good reason for the OS to support multitasking: Assume you hit 'upload' in your favorite application and now want to do something else while the data is slowly streaming out to the server. This allows you to move on to do something else.
You aren't the one multitasking though because, from your perspective, you're done with that previous task. This lets the application/OS do the multitasking that allows you to move on and do something else. Apple would argue this "good" vs making you think about it as a new task: "I want this upload to complete so I'll run this application in the background while I do something else then I'll come back and close this application when it is done". In the latter case you truly are doing the multitasking.
Only Apple could get away with promoting that as a feature: Pay for an app, fire it up and watch an ad for Nike, can't wait!
Can someone tell me why I would want a multitasking phone yet this study says it adversely affects brain learning?
Because a phone is not a brain? A mutitasking computer helps *me* to not multitask by doing things in the background for me. "You, program. Do this. Okay, now that that is being worked on, I can forget about it until it's done."
Can someone tell me why I would want a multitasking phone yet this study says it adversely affects brain learning?
I don't follow your line of reasoning, but find it fascinating.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
So now you have iPhone developers having to worry about which hardware they are running on:
* Older OSes that can't multi-task versus newer iPhone hardware
* Larger screen sizes on the piece of junk iPad versus the tiny iPhone screen rez
Isn't 'fragmentation' the latest talking point for Apple and Apple fans in the media after the 'teh most apps' failed to have any effect on slowing down the massive Android surge?
Technically, it's not multi-tasking anyway. It's really just application switching. And the 3Gs already does that ok (ie. I can have my music playing in the background whilst browsing the web).
Go ahead and jailbreak an iPhone 3g and try to run more than 2 apps at the same time. It slows to a CRAWL.
Sorry, but it is NOT true multitasking. Applications will have to be re-written to act like a service, then they will be "suspended" and enable quick application switching: http://www.precentral.net/apple-plays-its-multitasking-card-its-no-ace
"What Apple is doing instead of 'true' multitasking is offering seven different OS-level services that apps can take advantage of in lieu of actually running in the background: audio, VOIP, location, push notifications, local notifications, task finishing, and fast app switching. To switch to a recently opened app, you double-tap the home button and a dock of your recent apps pops up"
If you want to see real phone multitasking in action, and with a wonderful UI to go along with it/manage it, look at how Palm WebOS does it.
The Apple Hipster Douchebag Multitasking Roadmap
> Multitasking sucks and is unneeded. I don't want stupid multitasking I just want to focus on one app at a time.
> OMG!!! We are finally getting multitasking!!!
> Apple's half-assed multitasking is 'pretty slick' Apple 'invented' multitasking
I'll be dumping iPhone as soon as my current jailbroken 3GS is considered obsolete. I shouldn't have to literally break the law to make my phone run and work how I, the USER, want it to. I can no longer tolerate Apples' insistence of controlling everything i do and censoring my content, as well as locking in the app marketplace so that THEY profit from every transaction, therefore forcing me to pay higher prices than i would otherwise in a completely free and open market. I'm switching to andriod rather than upgrading. I encourage everyone else to as well.
In revised iPhone SDK License agreement:
3.3.1 -- Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
The older iphones and ipod touches don't get multitasking likely because they only have 128 MB of RAM.
I was disappointed to find out the ipad only has 256 (same as the 3GS). RAM is cheap, and there's no lack of space inside the ipad for an extra chip. With the way Safari currently works, it starts dumping web page caches as memory fills up. That means going to another "tab" (through an expose-like interface) can often mean re-loading the page from scratch, in practice. Word is the iphone 3GS does this a lot less, so it's definitely something they need to address for the ipad. Because the expose is two taps instead of the one required for tabs, and because of this reloading, I find myself using substantially fewer open browser windows on the ipad than on a desktop.
I'm starting to think they need to use part of the flash memory to cache things, especially with multitasking (that's what the "fast app switching" I presume does - save the full state of app memory on flash). The biggest downside to this is it wears down the flash.
I was a little disappointed to find out that the ipad release will be "fall". So far, though, the only time I've really wanted multitasking (or some pseudo-multitasking) is to play audio from Pandora or Magnatune while doing other tasks (and you can use the Magnatune website to stream since Safari's media player multitasks). Most of the other features are really for iphone users (ibook app, improved mail - though unified inbox will be nice).
By the way, anyone looking for an extremely thorough review of the ipad should look here. I have no relation to the author, but I found he covered things extremely well.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Interestingly enough nobody seems to have mentioned this gem yet. To summarize, Apple has decided to forbid
While this is clearly aimed squarely at Adobe and their Flash compiler I can't help wondering what does it mean even for C++ libraries such as Qt or wxWidgets (that I'm personally most interested in) as, with a bit of bad faith (that Apple doesn't seem to luck), they could be construed to be "intermediary compatibility layers" too. And this definitely seems to exclude using Perl, Python, Ruby or anything else.
If anybody had any doubts about Apple openness, this should hopefully be enough to dispel them (although whom am I kidding... there will surely be people able to justify this as well).
So...does that mean we'll finally see OpenVPN support?
...sounds so awful. Great choice of words :-D!
Thank you for not spamming
the
front
page
with
every
single
update
from the Apple event. Unlike certain other unnamed and unashamed websites out there, who feel they need to make a new article just to tell us that Jobs went to the bathroom and came back with slightly moist hands.
Apple want people to upgrade to the 3GS, then they will announce 3GS2, double charge for you
Probably because any intermediary code is going to invariably break with OS and API updates if wrappers and metaframeworks are used.
I can't code in C++ on Android, which forces Java(not a bad language by any means, but, not native either), so big deal?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Damn just as I submit that addendum about the changes to the SDK, it gets tacked on here! Seriously, I hope developers start to second guess their future with Apple and start looking to more open pastures. Also the fact that the iPhone 3G still won't be able to multitask is getting commonly overlooked in the roar of Apple cultists collectively orgasming over a feature everyone else has had for eons. I may just stick with my jailbroken 3.1.2 until my contract is up and I get a shiny new Android phone.
I don't see how the user agreement change prevents Flash apps from being recompiled into native ones.
It says to only use documented (public) APIs. I would assume that the runtime and compiler do this, no? Or does the flash to native compiler already use private APIs?
When you get down to it, you can code in assembly, C, C++, or other languages that compile against ARM and the libs Apple provides...
Flame Proof Comment:
[To all fellow commenters who will ask for a "Task Manager"]
As only a few mentioned in various forums already, there is no need for a task manager simply because each time you switch apps, the current app will be closed-killed-terminated the same way now happens.
Why most are confused, thus the endless discussions, is because the proposed method of "multitasking" appears not to have achieved much things in other platforms, like Android for instance where a task manager occasionally feels handy(for me too).
However, you forget the most significant thing in Apple's case.. The corporate fascism in Palo Alto does not approve apps which in any way will risk its regime. This, also(among others), includes bad developed apps which in sequence is in favor of satisfied customers.
Exposing only 7 services tightly controlled are not enough to cover devs needs for versatility, but ensures(as much as possible) unproblematic behavior.
In Android's case however, not only tight restrictions not apply, but services made by devs are allowed, so hangs, hogs and hiccups are inevitable.
So, what we have here are two opposite fields which have gone black or white.
The Apple "multitasking" will work OK because relies on best practice and tight control, BUT... too little too late.
You will not need a Task Manager as long as Steve Jobs is the king of the hill.
PS (to whoever agrees with the aforementioned): the number/amount of "background" applications(in reality closed-killed-terminated) which will appear when you double press the home button, is from trivial to whatever Apple decides for the best of the majority of their customers.
Either you didn't read the parent, or the content of the link you pasted. Try again. No multitasking on anything older than a 3GS.
Too late to be known as Bush the First, he's sure to be known as Bush the Worst.
"Looks like Adobe's release of CS5 with the Flash-to-native compiler has been nixed by Apple's new user agreement: '3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs.'"
That's the old agreement. The new agreement adds:
"Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited)."
That's the bit that nixes Flash.
Will it let you install your own applications on it however you like? No? Well it's still an essentially useless toy then.
[scratches head while reading your comment] I don't see any advantage on multitasking neither, we humans must be designed against doing more than a thing at once.
I am definitely biased but the point to note is that the iPhone didn't have multitasking until now unlike smartphone OSes out there that have had it since the late 1990s.
Whether it matters or not is the question . . .
This is all just my personal opinion.
And I'll guarantee that their multitasking implementation will be the best too. You won't need one of those apps that are popular on Android to kill off the background processes, cause Apple's implementation won't be careless and lazy the way Android's is.
I'm not even so sure that Android users need one of those app killers. But someone will write one for the iPhone none the less. If Apple allows it, more will follow.
No, that feature is included for all iPhone OS devices. So far, only multitasking has been specifically ruled out for some of them.
I hate ads, but I agree that this is a good move to get developers into HTML5...
"Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript"
Looks like the flash cross compiler just had a stake driven in it's heart.
Got Code?
Android has already had this since the G1
AS well as a bunch of features the iPhone is just now getting, and a bunch it doesn't have.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's not needed at all. It just saves a click or two. Same with wifi widgets. Not needed, just nice to have.
I think Apple have a good reason for doing so. All these web languages sacrifice resources for productivity. No big deal for desktop/server but it kills the phone.
Older devices will have a trimmed down version of the iPhone OS 4.0 which will not include multitasking because the older devices have 128MB of RAM.
They will most probably have the ads API.
You do know about NDK, right?
Don't worry. My next phone will not be from Apple. What some people do not get is that for every 1 person that complains, 8 more already gave up on your product without telling anyone. You should cherish the people who do complain. They at least are interested in you making the product better.
While i agree with most of what you said, there's one thing that i think you should know about the multitasking bit.
The way that apple described it's multitasking capabilities in iPhone OS 4.0, seem to be identical in how android handles multitasking - eg your app can have a background worker, that does stuff in the background (media player, IMs, background task for periodically checking stuff), and then the user-visible multitasking of switching apps, where the app that was used gets its state saved, then the process gets killed. If that app is then resumed the code handles the reading of the state.
This behaviour has been there since Android 1.0 (@override onPause() and @override onResume())
Currently, developers use the in-application ads to monetize free applications. This means that the only people who will see those apps are freeloaders who don't want to pay $0.99 for the full version of the app. Those folks won't tap on the ads, and even if they do, they won't buy stuff. Epic fail.
The article is unclear if e-mail has been expanded to support multiple user logins. This to me is the deal-breaker with an iPad -- I'd have one sitting on the coffee table today if it had support for multiple user logins to keep e-mail sorted and private. But I'm not going to get an iPad for each member of the household just to keep e-mail private. So is that fixed or not? When they fix it, instant sale. Until then, nope.
Pah, Storm Crow!
When the next iPhone is released the 3G will be 2 years old. I have a 3G and so does my wife. We could have upgraded to the 3GS in Jan, but have decided to wait for the next gen phone in Jun/July then we can renew our contract, get a steep discount and be up to date for the subsequent 18 months. Anyone else on a 3G iPhone will do the same.
Funny comment :)
Multitasking slows down human learning, so don't try to learn Spanish whilst making cheesy bacon chips. You'll get distracted!
This is why we have hardware like phones and computers to multitask for us.
Nick
As if Apple fanboys were not enough. A Wikipedia fanboy. Try reading any of a dozen of marketing books. Or even better take a marketing course.
I just downloaded some of the release notes (the beta is slowly coming over my pipe), but yes, it is using Grand Central to do the multi-tasking. It is listed as one of the key foundational technologies added.
There's also quite a bit of documentation on how to use "blocks" (closures and lambdas to you unwashed, non-Apple people).
I agree, it is clever to use GCD. But I'm also very surprised--I didn't think GCD was light-weight enough for something like the iPhone. Pretty cool!
P.S. I'd link or copy and paste, but *technically* that would violate the NDA you sign as an iPhone developer. Hey wait, does talking about it ... [Apple gestapo busts down door] :-)
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
I hate ads like everyone else on the Internet but I can understand that we developers do need to eat and usually to eat you need food, and to have food you need money. That said, Apple are giving developers another avenue for income. I'm sure there are many iPhone apps that would see a greater audience if it were ad-supported instead of being bought or even have two versions of the same app (one with ads and one without). Of course this also leaves the gates open for the system to be abused with ads on purchased ads etc but this is not a new problem. Everyone criticizes Apple on they're closed architecture of the iPhone/iPad (me being one of them) but they are protecting it from being abused, and it has been abused with the flood of cookie-cut applications etc. Don't get me wrong, this isn't Apple's only motivation for locking down the system, I'm just pointing out one of them.
From today's announcement, specifically Jobs himself: US Mobile Browser Usage
Android is already at 19% vs iPhoneOS (likely includes iPods as well) is at 64%. Considering the fact that first Android devices were released in October 2008 vs. iPhone's initial release of June 2007, I'd say Android is doing pretty fucking well!
http://www.google.com/phone
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm all for convenience and quick-access to features, etc. But what the parent is implying (and some people seem to think) is that one needs these apps to manage background processes. Not only are these quick-access to running apps, but they include auto-kill / cleanup features. And often this is touted as a way to save battery power.
I was toying around with a couple of these and eventually realized that I just don't need them. I have one left that I've kept around for an alternative view of running applications. But I've found that my Droid tends to handle itself without my intervention (although sometimes an app will mis-behave - those usually get uninstalled if they do it too much).
Well, I disagree with your presumption.
My presumption is that it adds features that people have been clamoring for, and it's a great way to dangle a treat in front of people with the older devices in order to get them to buy new ones. Thus, increasing Apple's sales.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Seriously, Apple is beginning to suffocate us developers. Instead of providing a way allow parallel user apps to either exit cleanly or kill them to avoid hogging CPU, Apple comes up with a way to tell you that Apple will provide for parallelism, you just have to hook into one of our services. Seriously, as a developer, that is very frustrating. We know the app that we are making and know where opportunities for parallelization lie. We dont want apple to tell us that. To avoid a few apps that misbehave, apple now thinks that it should not allow multitasking at user level at all!
Woohoo! I can develop a subset of my apps on a specific CPU for a multi-CPU supoprting platform!
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Screw you Apple.
I have always, ALWAYS defended apple and their sometimes questionable acts, but this is WAY over the line and is not defendable.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Reality proves you wrong. Take sound grenade, a stupid little app that plays a sound after a period of time elapses that the maker wrote it in a hour to see if he could. He now makes over $100 an hour off of click thru ads in the free version.
$100 an hour from an attempt to make as crappy an app as possible!
Does it finally support: -Bluetooh keyboards (non apple) -bluetooth headset (non-apple) -beaming contact by bluetooth to other mobile phones?
My Android phone (Milestone) does this,
no...
wait...
It doesn't.
Many devices can implement proper multi-tasking without sacrificing speed. I easily have 3 to 5 applications running at the same time on Android without any problems, the only slow downs I have ever seen on Android were when I used a custom ROM on my HTC Dream, replacing that with HTC's Android 1.6 image fixed it.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I wonder how long developers will continue to be allowed to use ad servers that compete with iAds (for example, MobClix), which might, for example, offer more than a 60% cut or access to advertisers that iAds might censor (such as advertisements for Apple competitors or controversial content).
Not really, as of 1.5 Android was pretty good at freeing up resources, as of 2.0 a task killer was inbuilt. Albeit the task killer is buried in the settings menu I've never actually needed to use it.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
No it doesn't, unless the apps are crap. The real problem is RAM, not CPU. On a 3G, you can run 5-7 lightweight apps with ease, but you can barely run 2 heavyweight apps at once. The symptom is that it runs out of RAM, freezes for a short while, then kills one of the apps.
For example, right now, I just backgrounded Messages, Photos, Notes, Weather, Clock, Calculator, and Voice Memos. That worked fine; those are very lightweight. Then I opened Twitterific, which is starting to push things. Nothing got killed yet though. Then I opened Maps, and that pushed it over the edge; Clock and Notes got killed. Then I opened YouTube and hit a video, and that nuked Calculator and Voice Memos, plus YouTube itself refused to background and got killed as I hit home. Then I opened iPod to listen to some music, which worked fine thanks to the defunct YouTube. But once you open Cydia, abandon all hope; everything but iPod gets killed.
You prove the parent's point nicely. You're so attached to multitasking that you're willing to sacrifice battery life. Of course battery life has something to do with the topic, IT'S A PHONE. And you can say "Welcome to fast smartphones" all you want, but for most people these features:
- Has a reasonable battery life
- Doesn't require me to swap batteries
- Lets me listen to music in the background
Are more important than this feature:
- Lets me run sendmail in the background
iPhone has the first three and has since the beginning. You running around saying "Yay! Multitasking!" isn't saving Palm, and I say this as a Palm customer of over a decade that has gone iPhone.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Chances are the OS is going to be exactly the same, and you can tweak a plist file on a jailbroken phone to enable multitasking on older devices. You can easily make a 3G think it's a 3GS. The feature will be there, just disabled.
You know, that's great ideals. Problem is I tried that. I avoided the iPhone for years, Nokia is crap, I wasted a lot of cash on that phone. Motorola Droid.... crap, did not integrate with exchange well, and no work apps that worked for it. My other choice was a Windows Mobile phone. I had 4 of them, I got tired of having to reboot the damn phone daily. it silently stops ringing or responding to calls.
I tried an iphone for 30 days, dammit this thing just works for the apps I needed for work, and exchange push. It is the ONLY phone I was ablet oget that worked reliably, had the app support for the trouble ticket system at work, email and exchange integration... I hate that.
If I could find a smart phone OS that was not locked that worked with everything at work... I'd buy it. Guess what, I tried to buy them, I have a drawer full of the current phones and past phones from the past 2 years. they all failed.
If you dont need your phone to make you money, that's great. You can put up with substandard stability (windows Mobile/Nokia S60), or will not run into the limitations that were show stoppers for me.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It has always supported ads in thrid party apps, and this only provides an alternative source for developers. Every other smartphone with 3rd party apps also supports ads in apps, so I assume you have no intention of using any smartphone 3rd party apps.
I also assume you will not be back to Slashdot.
Finally Steve Jobs is listening to what iPhone users want. More ads!
I don't know how many times I've heard an iPhone user saying "It's a great phone, and I love the apps, but I could really use more adware."
Support SETI@home
Did the applaud for the iAd? Did they pull Steve's iCock out of their mouths long enough to tell him how good it tasted?
I didn't see you down there from Android's height of superiority.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Nah. My next phone will most likely be Android based. Alternatively could be something like N900 next-gen (MeeGo). I could have lived with Windows Mobile, had not Microsoft decided they will copy his Steveness and his monopolist app store, not allowing me to install apps I develop, with the tools I want, on my own phone. Try even getting an Apple store account (necessary to use your phone, otherwise its just an expensive paperweight) without a credit card number and see the rigamarole Apple makes you go through to get one. Clearly their #1 concern is making money hand over fist. Not you, the consumer, nor even making great products. Well, its a shame but I do not think I want to buy anything more from you Apple.
I also thought the iPhone was great for the first days. Then I read what I had to do in order to develop software for it, or what someone else who wants to develop software for it needs to do. Oh and I do software development. So I make money. Developing. Software. Custom made, so I have no problems with piracy. DRM is useless to me. Nor do my clients want ads, so this is a misfeature to me as well.
Nor am I interested in buying more Apple products like an iMac just so I can do iPhone development. I have enough fun listening to people who have them tell me they need to do constant OS upgrades to be able to run software, until the day his Steveness decides their hardware isn't worth supporting anymore. Then people complain about Android versions. Hah!
Developers, developers, developers (as some other Steve would say).
Also, apparently Apple is the market leader in cutting and pasting.
On mobile devices - yes. They actually have an implementation that works really well, system wide, and as OS updates come along has become quite flexible as far as data type support.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It depends on the apps. I used to run backgrounder with a SIP client - it worked on a 3G (and I could play games at the same time) until wireless went to sleep. Eventually I rolled back to the non-jailbroken OS. Multitasking without constant wifi was just not worth it for me.
Great, so when this update goes live I get to look forward to titles like 'iPhone can now multi-task, competitors scrambles to do the same.' just like I do with the iPad and reading how companies are now 'just making' tablet PC's, to compete against Apples iPad tablet even though computer makers have been making them for years...
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
You mean get developers into fullscreen tags?
"Sales rate"? Are you projecting from the first month of sales for the Nexus One to a uniform total sales for the year? By that logic the iPad alone has a "sales rate" of roughly 109 million.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
Between apple and sony, the world seems to be going towards lawyer locking of everything as fast as possible.
I'm not sure about other people, but that sanitized future world is kind of really depressing.
Next step is you'll have to spend all your digital money to the 4 big corporations that control and enforce each of their platforms integrity in totalitarian ways.
News... that only come from a couple big media agencies.
Games... that check permanently online they're unmodified, and require trusted platforms banning any form of liberty/homebrew.
Videos&Music... that only come out in DRM form with you-are-only-renting-from-us terms.
Internet connections... where you can only do what the isp deems safe.
etc...
You feel exploited by a company having more than one revenue stream. Fine, there is nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is extrapolating your feelings to everyone else. This principle of yours is yours... not mine. Do not assume it applies to everyone else who goes along with something. Maybe they go along with it because it does not violate any principle of theirs -- in my case, if I feel I'm getting fair value out of the deal, I don't feel exploited.
And I do not believe it is wrong. And yet you feel that it is everyone's responsibility to stand up for your (misguided, IMO) principles. It is a matter of taste and preference, insofar as taste and preference include our values of what is right and wrong in an economic transaction. Because consumer-level economic transactions are all about taste and preference.
You have not directly limited anything. But what you believe to be the correct solution (black/white -- only one revenue source for content/app providers) would limit my options as a consumer of technology. Basically, you have an objection to a problem that I don't believe exists, and I'll explain why below.
Please, do not put thoughts in my mind or words in my mouth. I stated my positions in response to yours, no need to start assuming things about me that were not written, said, or thought by me. You speaking your mind, I have no objection to -- what I do have objection to is the results of how you think content/app revenue should work. This is not about you... it is about your specific position on this issue, which necessarily involves your value system and your opinions, which I needed to address if I'm going to explain why I disagree with you. Please do not take it as a personal attack, it is no such thing.
Let me sum up my point very clearly so we don't get bogged down in more unfounded claims (my "need", etc).
The decision to enter an economic transaction is simple -- is what I get out of the deal worth the same or more than what I put into it? How we value what we put into it and what we get out of it may vary. For example, you place a high value on things that you feel are exploitative, and you have a different set of behaviors that you consider exploitative than I do. There is not anything wrong with that.
Elaborating of the exploitation issue -- this is the thing that I do think is misguided about your position: that a company that has more than one revenue stream is somehow exploitative because of "double-dipping", which makes their business model morally incorrect. You still have the choice of accepting or refusing their terms for the good or service provided. As long as you have that choice, and have the information needed to make that choice, the
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I can't believe Apple would do this to their loyal users. Those little Eichmanns!!!
In other news, I'm also pissed off because I just found out that Nissan is releasing a new hybrid version of its Maxima but there will be no free upgrade available for my 2001 car. Corporate bastards!!!
I can't use a Corvette to move a sofa without extensive modification or strapping it to the roof in an unwieldy manner, but I don't whine about it.
You're just not using your imagination. Put the sofa in front of the vette and drive forward. Problem solved!
lalalala I can't hear you
- apple fan boy
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Welp...after learning today that multitasking would not make it to the iPod Touch 2g, I figured out that I had wrongly held out hope. I jailbroke it an hour ago, and now have multitasking, and many of the other features announced. Why did I even bother waiting?
Uh, yeah being able to have Pandora in the background, able to be controlled even when the phone is locked is SUCH an esoteric feature. And I'm sure noone would ever want to be able to receive an incoming Skype call when Skype wasn't the currently open app. I think it is YOU who are the idiot....
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
iPhone...Android...sure we can fight about which platform is better. But the important thing is that we all determine our levels of happiness and pride by the relative merits of the software platforms of our phones.
I mean--let's keep our priorities straight here, people.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
On the iPhone what you can do is limited to what Apple thinks users should be doing
Unless you jailbreak.
So basically technical users can do all the technical things they want, while non-technical users get an easier to use platform.
But hey, I can understand you N900 users not wanting users to have a choice of something they can easily understand how to use, so that you can continue to feel superior to everyone.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ever heard of UnrealScript? Unity game engine C# (using Mono) or Javascript? Or even OpenGL ES 2.0 shaders?
Pretty obviously OpenGL shaders are exempt.
Unity is an interesting grey area, since it actually spits out a project that you compile with XCode. But you do write the game logic in another language... but since code compiled from an XCode project looks all the same, and you aren't really building application UI's with it I think it will be fine - plus it would really hamstring the game market.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
``If you don't want to see the ads, don't buy ad-supported apps. There is almost always a more expensive ad-free version.''
Gad! Stop kidding yourself with statements like these: you paid full price so ads wont appear for the now fully fed. Fallacious: see cinemas with 30 minutes of boring-obnoxious ads & trailers!
See paid! cable television "broadcasts" riddled with ads. See PBS shows larded with 5 minutes of introductory wheat fields, granaries, mines, wind fields ads. See XM/Sirius radio with ... ^.^
Unfortunately I think many are often more interested in flame wars and stroking their egos by putting down other people. Especially on /., land of the I-Told-You-So. The trifecta of Apple vs. MS vs. Linux/Android/Firefox gets tiring.
Mine is jailbroke, runs Backgrounder, and works fine...seems even faster as the multi-tasked apps that I need fast are ready, like Zoom In and the like. Try that... don't get all the blather on this, it's already fixed if you truly own your iPhone:)
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
without once bothering to wonder whether it's appropriate on a small-screen embedded device. It isn't.
Calling someone a "douchebag" just because he has a more functional brain than you do is not nice. Remember, most people are far more intelligent than you, don't hate them for it.
If multitasking isn't appropriate on a small-screen device, why has the iPod and the iPhone had it from day one? They have you know. The difference between pre 4.0 and post 4.0 is that this functionality is now available to comapnies that are not called Apple. As you should know if you have ever used an iPhone, the Apple music player goes on playing in the background when you do other stuff on the phone. Try it. Press the "iPod" icon on your phone. Start playing music. Hit the home button - can you still hear the music? Sure you can. Bring up Echofon and check what Twitter is all about. Can you still hear the music? Of course you can. You can because the iPhone has had multitasking always, but only for Apple.
You are a moron sir, for calling people names just because you are so in love with Steve Jobs that you can not take valid criticism of his products. A sad moron in fact.
"Sales rate"? Are you projecting from the first month of sales for the Nexus One to a uniform total sales for the year? By that logic the iPad alone has a "sales rate" of roughly 109 million.
I'm not sure I agree with his end of year projection, but Gartner does forecast Android overtaking the iPhone, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile, by year 2012. And also, let's not forget, Mainland China (despite all the problems they had with Google) are forking and standardizing on Android 1.6. How many cell phone users does China have anyway?
The way that apple described it's multitasking capabilities in iPhone OS 4.0, seem to be identical in how android handles multitasking - eg your app can have a background worker, that does stuff in the background (media player, IMs, background task for periodically checking stuff), and then the user-visible multitasking of switching apps, where the app that was used gets its state saved, then the process gets killed. If that app is then resumed the code handles the reading of the state.
You're almost correct. Where it's wrong is that your app cannot have any background worker. Rather, the OS supplies a few background workers for "common things", to which you can post tasks and register notifications. If whatever you want to do isn't a "common thing", you're still SOL.
They do have one service that's named "Task finishing", which looks like it's a general-purpose background worker which can be used to execute some arbitrary piece of code. However, they describe it as "if your app is in mid-task when your customer leaves it, the app can now keep running to finish the task" - which, I suspect, means that it'll kill any task after a certain timeout, so you still can't use it to run your own daemon.
All in all, it seems that e.g. writing an IM client for an existing network, or an IRC client, that would receive messages in background, is still not possible on iPhone - unless you also run your own server for push notifications, and tunnel user connection through that.
We are, that is why, every time your hear beats, you find it such a problem to draw a breath.
Probably because any intermediary code is going to invariably break with OS and API updates if wrappers and metaframeworks are used.
Why? What makes "intermediary" code any different from any other code? It calls the same public functions in core API, in the end.
if it had support for multiple user logins to keep e-mail sorted and private.
Who is root? Who can (and can't) install key loggers? Who has read access to which parts of the file system? You do use SMTP over TLS on all accounts so the email can't be sniffed on the network, right?
Sorting the mail is the easier task. I'm not sure about privacy; exactly how would you design the system so it's even possible?
Woohoo! I can develop a subset of my apps on a specific CPU for a multi-CPU supoprting platform!
So far, at least, Android is effectively standardized on ARM.
My point was not that Android won't overtake the iPhone in popularity or technical merit, but to highlight the danger of using a one-off month to project for an annual rate. If the figure quoted was based on Feb or March it might have more credence. For that matter, Gartner doesn't exactly have a stellar prediction record.
That said, who is "Mainland China" exactly? Do you mean a/more-than-one PRC telecomms provider has forced Android for their own purposes? I'd hardly expect that to be as open the promise of Android is.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
So what you're saying is that Android is fast becoming a useless OS because everyone's shitting out the same hardware?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Because they're _searching for stuff_, maybe? :-)
"Beaming"/bluetooth contact/file transfer worked pretty bloody well for my Nokia and Sony Ericssons. Indeed, iSync made it wonderfully easy to wirelessly sync updated contact info to my Mac. Why is this missing for the iPhone?
(indeed, why didn't Apple use iSync for the iPhone?)
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
>> Ads on mobile phone? DO NOT WANT.
YES WE DO. iAd is GOOD
Two reasons:
The minor one: More free apps on the store as app-writers will be able to live off the ad revenue.
The major one: Right now, every other app implements its own ads mechanism.
Nobody's gonna sit and de-ad all them 0.99$ apps.
Enter iAd - a central OS-level facility to deliver ads. That's excellent. It's a single point of failure.
Couple that with root access that allows you to modify any file on the system (that's a jailbreak, to the unix-uninitiated), and that spells one single place you need to jam a spanner (a cydia app that'll pro'lly boil up on Cydia inside 3.2 minutes from the iAd launch) and all ads in all your apps will just -go-.
Go iAD!
-
Your milestone has hardware on par with the 3GS, not the 3G. I have jailbroken my 3G and sure I CAN do background apps but it definitely slows things down (i.e. not something apple would find acceptable). Hell, the 3G only has 128mb ram, thats barely enough for safari.
The whole point of the new multi-tasking APIs is to avoid exactly that slowdown, by transparently killing and resuming apps to keep enough RAM available. I find this assertion from Jobs curious because the G1 could do the same multi-tasking as the milestone. It worked fine, you just paid the "app resume" penalty a bit more often than on devices with more RAM.
It's a sensible choice. Apple was waiting for the CPU and RAM capacity to catch up before implementing "multitasking" features.
I'm still using the 2G iPhone and I've never really yearned for multitasking. I'm not a power user, of course...
And also, let's not forget, Mainland China (despite all the problems they had with Google) are forking and standardizing on Android 1.6. How many cell phone users does China have anyway?
And this will be a total disaster for Android. A huge market that will use only an older version of the OS, lacking some of the most recent features. Android is at 2.1, 3.0 is in development, and many older handsets cannot be upgraded. Not only that, but tens of millions of smartphones are still produced with 1.6 and customized in such a way that upgrades will be impossible. Most users just know that it is "Android" and will realize later, after they have signed their contracts, that they have been scre*ed.
By allowing providers and handset makers the ability to tweak the OS, Google shoot Android in the foot. There will be increasing incompatibility between versions, handsets, and providers. Users will notice that, at least those that BUY and USE applications - and, guess what, THESE users are those that are important to developers. The users that never buy an app are irrelevant. Apple will not care much if a new handset maker sells 1B phones in a year, when the application market on these phones is small.
I predict that many Android users will not be satisfied, and thus will leave the platform. On my iPhone, I know that I will get regular OS updates, that almost all my applications are guaranteed to work with the different devices, and this protects my investment in software. This makes most iPhone OS users loyal, or locked-in, depending from your perspective. Apple is going to laugh in the long run.
I hope that Android will keep pressure on Apple, but it may *not* be on the basis of features, because handset makers and cellular service providers are not interested in that. This is a pity. Somehow I got the feeling that it will be Windows Phone 7 that will make pressure on Apple.
Roberto
You know that 40% of the devices running iPhone OS aren't phones, right?
I used multitasking on my HTC Wallaby in 2004. The device has got 64 megabytes of RAM and a 206 MHz StrongARM CPU. Background applications worked well, the phone was always responsive.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
the shitty bit about this is that i own a "3G" ipod touch 8gb, which is nothing more then a 2G ipod with an exterior update to look like the actual 3Gs
So apple sells this as a new ipod touch, but it wont run their newest software.. i wonder if OS 4.0 means the death of the 2.5G 8gb ipod.
I'll survive though, considering ive gotten along without multitasking so far. I would have really liked it, but eh.. if i really want it i'll just have to pony up the dough for a new iPad nano...
People, what a bunch of bastards
The iPhone did have multitasking - only it was a protected function up until now. Just like Symbian protects the All-File function. Just as restrictive but no one no one speaks about that.
Take that you apple loving fanbois!! Now you ALSO have multitasking. Didn't you all look at us android ppl and say "Well its better to not have multitasking as that would slow down the currently running program, and result in a bad user experiance".
You will probably not *BUY YOUR CELLULAR CREDITS NOW THROUGH YOGIBEAR* get worried too much by any *GET YOUR LEGS SHAVED FASTER!* intrusive ads.
Don't worry, you won't *GET VIAGRA CHEAP NOW!* be annoyed by it. *PLEASE WAIT FOR 10 SECONDS TO WATCH OUR AD BEFORE YOU CAN CONTINUE YOUR PHONECALL!*
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
A jailbroken iphone does not usually slow down when an application runs in the background because it doesn't support virtual memory. In my experience, the phone frequently runs out of memory and kills your background applications. There isn't much point to running pandora or iradio in the background if safari is going to kill it to free up memory to load slashdot. I think that the multitasking in OS 4 would work better on the 2g iphone because the OS would know that pandora was playing music and try to kill mail and ipod before killing pandora.
Hey you, fanboy, why you have chosen Nexus One which is sold only in a web store? Why don't you mention Motorola Droid/Milestone which actually outsold iPhone in the same period of time? (first 60-70 days since premiere).
Daring Firewall has this to say:
"The App Store platform could turn into a long-term de facto standard platform."
I'm sorry, but App Store is a revenue model, not a platform.
Backward%20compatibility%20is%20over-rated
My 3 year old Nokia N95 multitasks fine. I can be logged into IMAP email, browse w/ Opera mini, listen to internet radio, on bluetooth A2DP headphones that softly mute when a VOIP/SIP call arrives. (Why buy a phone that doesn't support VOIP/SIP?)
It also tethers via USB to provide 3g internet to my Ubuntu Asus Eee, for several hours on batteries. (And it is easy to hotswap an AA rechargeable for extra power; a great accessory)
Those are some of the highlights, not an exhaustive list.
GPS and Nokia's SportTracker free online service is great!
The N79 has all this, costs half what I paid when the N95, and has a Polar heart meter receiver built-in too. So when you upload your workout to SportTracker, images and videos are geo-tagged to your route, (and pop-up in an Ajax window to play), playlists listened-to are also recorded, along with heart-performance along the route.
When I upgrade eventually, I'm leaning towards the N900, or whatever follows it. Nokia likes linux folks like us.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
... that multitasking is being announced a week after the iPad is released? Wasn't the lack of multitasking one of the heaviest criticism directed at the design of the iPad? Why wasn't that feature shipped with the iPad anyway?
Oblivion Awaits
Yeah, and how come I can't run XBox games on the PS3? F*cking Sony, they should just support it because I want it.
Um, yeah I've done that on my 3G and if you try and run Fring in the background, the phone slows to a crawl. The 3G and 1st gen iPhone don't have the memory to support more than about 3 applications at the same time. This is not counting all the resident daemons running.
Because it means that your choice of Android phones are going to become a sea of non-descript, mediocre devices that don't do anything special in a variety of prices.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
The user's ability to multitask is not what is being questioned. Just because someone chooses to focus on one thing doesn't mean they want all of their other programs to halt while they do so. Prime example: I was listening to This American Life the other night on my iPod Touch. Someone played a word in "Words with Friends (Scrabble)". Without thinking I switched to Words with Friends, and my audio from This American Life died.
die444die
How does that follow from using the same (because it's simply most optimal) cpu architecture? Heck, an architecure used in virtually all mobile phones, whatever they are, period.
(not that I'm saying targeting it directly would be a good agreed, like one paretn poster suggested; ARM does change things from time to time AFAIK)
One that hath name thou can not otter
I don't get why a place full of people rabidly enthusiastic about open source and freedom, continuously give attention to this shitty fruit company that is antithetical to most of the ideas we enthusiastically support.
So basically anything is bad if it's not open source with full control, unless it's AppHole - they can do what they want and thats excellent. I don't get it. Apple is the enemy - ignore the hypnotic advertising.
Speak out before Apple takes your freedom!
This already exists in the App Store, but the feature has to be coded specifically per-app.
Yes, the no-Ads people are a bit late to the party. Many of the free apps I use already have some advertising. All Apple is doing is providing additional support for something that developers are already doing (and looking for a cut of the profits in return, of course).
Not sure where you are getting your info. My Pre lasts all day. Having a bunch of cards open does drain the battery a bit faster, but you don't keep them open all day.
I often have 3 web pages open to 3 different restaurants menus, while also having google maps open to see where they are while listening to music the whole time. I flip back and forth make the decision, then close the cards. Why would you not want that? You have been fooled (hoodwinked!) if you think the 15 seconds of higher battery usage is not worth it.
The only thing I see as a gripe is the touch screen is a little less accurate than an iphone, but thats it. It's flashy and slick AND open.
FUNK!
I do not like this kind of solution
We are not talking about YOUR personal likes and dislikes. We are talking about technical abilities.
If you meant to refer only to what you yourself like, you need to frame the discussion that way instead of stating the device has a general technical issue when anyone with five free minutes can overcome it.
I can fully understand why on principal, someone may not accept that solution - but it's not a pragmatic answer at all, if all you want to do is do something that can only be done via jailbreaking.
don't complain if you end up running into the limitations one day.
This seems unlikely to happen because as I said there are no limitations for someone willing to jailbreak.
That is the technical reality.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is slashdot. For everybody who complains, 0.08 more already gave up on the product without telling anyone. Since the complainer was typically not using any Apple product anyway, Apple may lose up to 0.28 customer per complaint. It's not a problem for Apple, but I do feel sorry for the customer losing 28% of his or her body.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Why did you buy it then, and not an Android based phone?
Android didn't exist when iPhone came out.
iPod Touch already lets you listen to iTunes and MP3s in the background. You just can't listen to Pandora, but Pandora is less useful on the iPod Touch anyway because it will drop when you leave Wi-Fi coverage.
In other words, the feature that Apple was touting was reliable battery life and performance. Apple's initial solution to this was limiting the iPhone to Apple produced and tested applications. They subsequently relaxed this to allow 3rd party applications, but requiring approval and not permitting background processing. And they have now further relaxed this by introducing a framework for 3rd party background processing that preserves these key features.
On release, multiple benchmarks showed that Safari on the original iPhone was faster at rendering web pages than competing devices. Obviously, everybody has gotten faster, but the iPhone still tests close to the head of the pack.
Obviously that does not mean that you can't find web sites that will bog down on the iPhone--or on a computer, for that matter.
oh yea, like the backgrounder app I've had on my iphone since I bought it and jailbroke it (a week later) over a year ago.
Sounds like iPhone OS4 is jailbroken OS3, with some restrictions.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
Rhetorical question: is your Android's ability to run 3-5 apps without slowdown related to the Android having better hardware than the 2 year old iPhone 3g?
I disapprove of what you say, but I would defend to the death your right to say it against abusive moderators if I had any mod points.
Seriously, I don't find the arguments in Mr. Coward's comment very convincing either, but you have to know that you're abusing the system when you mod this perfectly polite post down as "Flamebait" just because you disagree with it, so why do it?
Property is theft.
Jobs said iPhone 4.0 will be available for the iPhone 3G S and third-generation iPod touches by summer and for the iPad by fall. The iPhone 3G and older iPod touches will get some of the new features but will be left out of the multitasking fun.
You know, you have to sincerely wonder... Jobs has to be fully aware that he's purposely giving fewer of the new features to users of a slightly older model entirely to encourage a few of them to purchase a new phone they wouldn't have otherwise. Wasn't he once young and sincerely idealistic when he started a funky little computer company? Does he ever feel brief pangs of guilt for being such a greedy asshole now?
Property is theft.
I think you mean:
It's all marketing, friend. They simply use your platform of choice, which - surprise surprise - you approve of. If they thought it would sell more devices, they'd lock stuff down as far as they could in a new york second. But, since they get a mobile OS that's free, they can increase their margins and attract some customers who disapprove of a more locked down approach.
Or did you really think that Nokia chooses Linux because it wants to be your chum?
You know, the HTML5 ability to deliver browser-rendered 3D, lets say, via X3D (using WebGL and Javascript) is kinda retarded compared to Flash's Papervision. The iPad would be the perfect interface for a papervision flash site like... www.tittybingo.com. I think apple wants absolute control over media. Its too bad. That desire for control always ascends to tyranny. And then rebellion, a brief period of freedom followed by the process repeating itself.
The *biggest* problem I see with this change is that is that it goes beyond forbidding tools that do their own compiling/linking at the final stage of a build. That's still pretty weird and annoying, but it's not the most onerous thing, and hey, anybody who's building their own tool targeting the iPhone would probably be well served to re-use as much of the open source tools that do the actual build process behind the scenes as possible.
No, the horrible thing here is... you apparently can't even target C, Objective C, or C++ code as an intermediary and then have *Apple's* tools produce your final output. That last part is indefensible even under the cloak of quality assurance -- the only worry with this kind of arrangement is about the quality of the code that goes into the XCode toolchain, and it's as big a worry if programmers write it by hand than if a programmer writes a program to generate it.
Apple is essentially telling developers it doesn't want them to use or build tools that make them more productive. Read this article by James Long:
http://jlongster.com/blog/2010/04/09/scheme-dead-iphone/
Particularly this quote:
This is also something new. This is potentially Apple's very first genuinely anticompetitive market-power abuse. People have made all kinds of noise about iTMS and DRM and the iPod but there's always been a pretty high degree of choice, there's always been an escape hatch to use what you've bought from Apple in some other way. This action may be their very first real sin on this front, and it's pretty troubling.
I'm not saying this as some anti-fanboi of the stripe who thinks the moronic observation "Apple is a fashion company" is deeply insightful comment. If you look at my comment history you'll find I've defended Apple in a lot of discussions. I still think a lot of their products have real merits. But the part of this license change that stipulates the "original" language code has to be written in is just indefensible.
I'm not saying this as some antifanboi. If you go through my comment history, you can find all kinds of comments where I defend Apple's product decisions and call out morons who somehow think that the statement "Apple is a fashion company" is insightful. I like a lot of their products. I even like XCode and Objective C.
Tweet, tweet.
I'm sorry, what? What Apple intruduced isn't even full multitasking, doesn't put that much of a strain on CPU & RAM. Besides, other platforms could multitask just fine for a long time, om much more modest hardware...
One that hath name thou can not otter
Rhetorical question: is my old Nokia E50 (211 MHz or so ARM11, 20 MB user ram) ability to run 3-5 apps without slowdown related to magic?
One that hath name thou can not otter
So...open sourcing Symbian or making Qt really free is also marketing?...
One that hath name thou can not otter
I wonder, can you give a quick answer how complete is tricking 3G into thinking it's 3GS? Do also the features that officially the hardware doesn't support, like video recording, suddenly work?
One that hath name thou can not otter
During the demonstration, Scott Forstall indicated that apps in the background enter a "quiescent state, using no CPU" on the device. How is this multitasking? Apple is completely suspending any background apps, while allowing only specific background processes (local notification, location, audio, etc.) to run. For example, I'd like Tweetie to download tweets in the background, or NetNewsWire to download articles in the background. From the presentation, it looks like the only way this could occur in the background is for me to launch the app, manually begin downloading data, and then exit to some other app or the task manager. If those apps utilize the task completion feature in OS 4, they'll finish on their own. That's OK, but I'd much rather have them downloading that data at predetermined intervals, like a mail client does. If we had true multitasking, those apps would actually be running in the background, and could do this. On a totally unrelated note, how do we quit apps in the new task manager? Hold down the icon until we get an "x" in the upper left corner of the icon? I didn't see any differentiation in the presentation between switching and app and closing an app.
For an iPhone, yes, right now you can jailbreak it. But how about later?
Once you have jailbroken it, you are done.
It's possible that Apple might come out with an update you would like, but that's beside the point. Jailbreaking lets you do anything, right now, and forever after.
Jailbreaking is a pretty cool achievement, but it's something that exists thanks to volunteers that could at any time find something more exciting to do.
Which (besides being extremely unlikley) does not matter, because you have already jailbroken it.
That only matters if you want to keep up with Apple updates, which is not totally necessary (there are still a significant number of Touch users running 2.0 for example, even on non-jailbroken devices).
When you discuss what a device can do, the discussion is what you can do as long as you own the device. The base software plus the ability to jailbreak offers a known quantity against which you can judge.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The Droid was released on November 6th, not January, the month which the OP was discussing the "sales rate".
Not sure where you jumped to the fanboy conclusion, as I was attacking the falsity of a "sales rate" by contrasting it with a recently released product for which I knew the day-one sales.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
In-app ads are nothing new; most other platforms have them.
What is new is that Apple is trying to grab this market for themselves instead of leaving the choice up to the application developers.
So because many people will go along with something and will not oppose it on principle, and therefore precedent for it exists, that automatically means it's not exploitative and is not an instance of double-dipping?
You know, there was another something that people went along with and didn't oppose it on principal until it was too late.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?