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iPhone 4 News Roundup
We have a slew of iPhone 4-related stories this morning, so I'm lumping them together for easier consumption/ignoring, depending on your personal feelings on the subject.
Here is a blog entry proclaiming that iOS 4 multitasking sucks and why. Here is a sketchy summary of privacy violations by Apple and AT&T — apparently they are reporting back jailbroken phones. Skunkpost has a story about the lines and sales of the new phone. But the big news of the morning is the reception problems that apparently only affect people who hold the phone in their left hands.
Goatse.
But seriously folks...the new iPhone hardware and many of the additions they are making to the OS are really great...but I'm sorry, I still can't get past the walled garden. Again, I know the app store would have everything I would likely need, but I just can't accept being told that an application would be inappropriate for me to use. And yes, I know I could just jailbreak it...but that's not the point. I don't care that I can get around it, I care that the walled garden exists in the first place. As a consumer, the best I can do is vote with my wallet.
This is only my opinion, I don't speak for others, YMMV, etc applies.
Living With a Nerd
Apple prefers if you use your phone with both hands, in particular while visiting certain web sites; it keeps you out of trouble and prevents the moisture sensor from triggering.
The screens have yellow spots. Apparently these "retina" displays have cataracts.
Steve Jobs doesn't care about left handed people. - Kanye
They couldn't justify cutting my Apps out of the market place. I had left-handed solitaire, left-handed minesweeper. I was starting a smorgasbord of left handed products. With no justifiable reason to keep me out, and with all the bad press lately about them selectively choosing their App store, they've decided to lock me out at the hardware level.
Those dastardly fiends!
Perhaps Apple (and others) need to shift emphasis back towards the actual calling features of their phones. Who wants a phone that drops calls if you hold it wrong ? It's great that it has new software, etcetc, but any phone I would consider buying needs to include basic features like better than average reception, a decent sounding speaker/mic, and most importantly, does not drop calls if you touch it in it's no-no spot.
At least almost certainly.
MuscleNerd, one of the, if not THE foremost Apple device hacker out there has implied he has done code inspection and just through common sense says its all BS.
There are a few tweets on the matter but this is one of the more telling:
http://twitter.com/MuscleNerd/status/16876551921
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Apple's restrictions on multitasking make little sense from a technical point of view. From other platforms, we know that is not a major battery drain, and it's perfectly possible for a scheduler to do automatically whatever Apple's special APIs are trying to achieve.
Unless Apple just doesn't know what they are doing, the real reason behind Apple's restrictions on multitasking is more likely the same as their restrictions on scripting languages and alternative development environments: they want to keep control. With multitasking, you could run local file servers and local web servers. You could create new applications delivery platforms, local music servers, and a local file system and file manager.
The multitasking complaint seems kind of off to me - he complains about the tray being "cluttered" after you go through a few apps because they are automatically added to the tray. But the tray is just four apps wide - how can you have clutter in only four items? And he complains he needs to press and hold to quit an app - but also complains most apps are just suspended. So then why quit an app? It's not doing anything and will be removed if you are low on memory.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apparently Apple's testers discovered some new way of using phones that does not include holding it in your hand.
Also;
You mean you have to use your hands?
That's like a baby's toy!
The queue in Hampstead this morning was 23 strong at 6.30 this morning (I was number 23), though by 7.00 it extended fairly far down Hampstead High Street. Mercifully, Samir in his white Apple iPhone 4 t-shirt came around, checked we were O2 customers and fetched everyone tea, coffee and juice from Gail's on the other side of the road. I didn't dare ask for one of Gail's scrumptious cake (had a slice of birthday cake there a few weeks ago and it was heavenly). I wasn't blessed with the Divine Device until a little past nine, but it all went smoothly with nary a cross word. That's a lie, a rather brash young lady sashayed up and attempted to sweet talk the two chaps behind me into allowing her to queue jump. Her lousy manners were challenged by a whingy American-sounding fellow. She then said "what are you going to do about it? Hit me?" She was Spanish and looked for all the world like some demented Almodóvar-esque creation. She had the good sense to eventually leave. So far the iPhone 4 has been brilliant. Fingers crossed the decent reception will last!
Seriously, is anyone else getting tired of the daily Apple story on the iPhone?
I get it, it's tech that people like, but do we really need daily updates on it? This site tends to be a heavy linux advocate and there is a nice writeup of the EVO 4G on Ars today. Not a peep of that though, MORE APPLE!
Android supports full preemptive multitasking, thanks to it being built on Linux.
You do realize that you can't change reality, or the pain that you suffer from due to having bought an iPhone, by spreading outright lies about non-Apple devices and software, right?
Regardless of what you say or believe, Android will still support preemptive multitasking, while iOS does not.
I would be curious about the conductivity of certain coatings. I personally hate covers for phones, as they add bulk. As a person with nickel allergies, I have to coat belt buckles and the like with acrylic. I wonder if the same would help this antenna. If so, then they could do something similar in the manufacturing process. They do similar coatings for fishing rods that weather well.
iPhone has preemptive multitasking, too, it's just not fully exposed to applications.
However, a misbehaving application cannot prevent others from running, which was the case with true cooperative multitasking OSes, such as Win3.x.
The new iPhone actually does address a lot of the calling complaints.
If you read the engadget review, the metal external antenna really do improve signal and ( for them) eliminated dropped calls.
The speakers are supposed to be improved for hearing people, and the phone had two microphones now so it can do noise cancelation.
Basically, they did a lot of things to improve call quality.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Apparently the author who wrote about multitasking hasn't actually tried it out yet, because he's off-base. While the app tray does quickly get cluttered, as he mentions, the lack of true multitasking is exactly why this doesn't matter - you can have as many apps down there as you want but they're not actively consuming resources. Where he's really off is in his implication that it now becomes difficult to find your apps to switch back to them. Look, if I'm playing Peggle and then use 4, or worst case 8, apps after switching out of Peggle - mentally I just won't even think to look in the task tray for it anymore. I just can't keep track of every app I've used in my brain. The tray will quickly let me switch back to my most recently used apps, which is really handy - but when I want to switch back to the middle of my Peggle game a week and 20 other app uses later I... and this will sound crazy... click the Peggle icon wherever it's located on my main screens. The author seems to think that the only way to resume an app is from the task tray, and that's simply not true.
Granted, I had some uncertainty about how this would work, too. But I grabbed a new iPhone and tried it out to see exactly how it works, rather than hopping on the interwebs and writing up an article with uninformed assumptions which then ended up on the front page of /.
Additionally, he goes on to say that developers have to explicitly add multitasking. While that's true for using the background services, my understanding (and correct me if I'm wrong folks, as I have this on good authority but haven't actually tried it) is that for the base level of background freezing, which for a majority of apps is all that's really needed, all you have to do is recompile the app against iOS 4. It's not automagic, but it's really not so bad as the author implies. The worst bit about it is submitting to the app store, but it should be pretty painless to get to that point.
Granted, it's not true multitasking. Everyone knows that by now. But frankly, I'd rather the phone always be responsive and maintain its battery life than have true multitasking for the vast majority of the things that I do and have no desire to have to actively manage my apps (which contrary to the author's claims, I don't have to do). Maybe some day I'll change my mind on that. Maybe right now this level of multitasking isn't good enough for many people out there. And that's cool, we have options now - get one of the many excellent Android phones. But please don't write a blog post of inaccuracies.
1995 just called. They want their pro-Macintosh argument back.
My blog
From the TechWorld iOS4 multitasking article in the summary:
Waiting for a YouTube video to buffer over a 3G connection? It won't go anywhere unless you're staring at the loading screen.
Honestly, doesn't this also happen by default with applications on other mobile OS'es like Android, unless the developer specifies otherwise in the app's code?
From what I understand about the Android application life cycle under normal circumstances, once an Activity (the app's presentation layer, what you interact with) is completely obscured, the application's host process becomes a "background" process. Meaning, the app's Activities aren't visible and there are no Services running, thereby making the app's host process one of the first processes to be killed off so to allocate resources. (Service example: a media player running in the background while you're actively using another app). For an app's host process to remain in an active state, the app must have a running Activity, Service or Broadcast Receiver. In my following the Android dev tutorials, I've seen that only the Activity is absolutely required - Services and Broadcast Receivers are added only when you need them for your app to fulfill it's intended purpose.
So, in the case of buffering the YouTube video, if I were writing an Android app to do just that, I'd have to have explicitly created a Service to keep buffering the video while I used another app. If I didn't create a Service to keep buffering when the app's Activity exited the active state, then my app would do just what the article says - the app does nothing until I explicitly return to the app.
Am I missing something?
But most apps won't do anything except go to sleep, which means one of the classic tricks of multitasking, loading one task while you perform another, is not available unless the developer adds that function under a special task completion API. Some apps, such as Flickr, may take advantage of this feature for large file transfers, but others won't. Waiting for a YouTube video to buffer over a 3G connection? It won't go anywhere unless you're staring at the loading screen.
Love to say it, but things getting more closed is not something "new", it was always around, and in fact, the things are getting more open all the time. Even for handheld devices.
Why the "open it" movement is called a movement, is exactly, because it began in circumstances, were not much was open.
Being consumer oriented, by decidinig, what a costumer should be able to do, and what not, is only decided by what makes first mentioned become second mentioned in greatest percentages, nothing more.
The iPhone is for people who want to use a cool gadget, not for people who want to have a gadget for all their things they want to use it to.
And yes, everybody is both a little bit. That's why adapting of dinosaurs does not build upon change of "antiquated" views, but instead on having an idealistic opinion while getting a realistic attitude.
I posted this as a comment on the multi-tasking article, but I'll restate it here with a little more verbosity.
Ever since I've had an iPhone, I've wondered what the obsession is with multitasking. I couldn't really think of any two *productive* things to do simultaneously on a phone. On a PC (by that I mean a desktop, laptop, netbook), I can appreciate the need to go do some other design work while you render a huge video, or burn a DVD, or OCR a huge document. On a phone, I can't, off-hand, think of much CPU-intensive stuff that can run for an extended time without needing to stop for user input. Because of that, productivity is lost because you're having to stop and switch apps all the time. The meaning of "EMACS" is true. Editors Make All Computers Slow. If the device is waiting for user input, then its speed (or multitasking ability) is moot.
Wanting to Pandora to keep streaming while you tweet is *not* a productivity enhancer; it's merely letting you be a little more streamlined about wasting your time (kinda like texting while you watch TV). Now, I know I'm sounding like an old "all work, no play" curmudgeon about this (and get off my lawn, too!). Don't get me wrong. I agree that being able to keep Pandora going while I do other stuff is a nicety, but I don't think that something like that is such a "must have" thing that it warrants all of the articles and posts we've seen demanding that Apple make significant changes to the OS and its API in order to make it possible. I'd never once make the argument that the iPhone OS has some glaring hole in its functionality because I can't listen to music while I'm sending a text.
Yet, Apple caved and gave it to us anyway. So now, the dude who wrote the article is mad because he can't go do something else while a YouTube video loads. Breaking story: If you're visiting YouTube, you've already decided that your time isn't valuable. I read another article where a guy was mad because he couldn't go switch to something else in the 5-6 seconds while a page loads in Safari (probably while he's driving, too).
My position on full background-execution multitasking remains unchanged from the first time I tried a Windows Mobile phone after being a Palm user for years. With a small device like a phone, it's just too easy for a user to rack up this huge array of crap running in the background without realizing it. And that, potentially, has a greater impact on your productivity since it will gobble up the power in your battery. With a PC, you've got a task bar or a dock to see what you've got running. In addition, there's a one-click way of shutting off the app. Whenever a Windows Mobile user would have me look at their phone to fix it, I'd find that they had a half-dozen things still running: control panel, mail, notepad, contacts... all of these things were things where they had finished their work with those apps, but they either didn't realize that they had to close the apps or they were too lazy to press "Menu->File->Quit". Instead, they just went back to the home screen and started the next app they wanted.
Personally, I think that Apple's compromise is a good one. If your app doesn't have a compelling reason to keep executing (like streaming audio, getting GPS updates for navigation, etc.), then the most your app really needs is just to have its state saved for quick re-launch.
iPhone 4, can NOT Upload 720p Videos to youtube direct from phone! What a Shame see http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=10309456
Preemptive multitasking is a feature of the kernel which iOS fully supports, it however restricts access to it for regular applications except through a small set of APIs.
Worthless to 98+% of smartPhone users. Tech folks have a very skewed and unrealistic view of what smartphones are and how they will be used. We techies want our smartphones to do a lot of what our laptops do for us.
Regular users don't want their smartPhone to be a computer. They want it to be a phone that let's them do a few other things. They don't want to have to remember to stop apps so their battery doesn't die in a hour or 2. They don't want complex navigation. They don't want apps that make them constantly reboot their phone. They do want a simple, consistent interface and they want to know that the few apps that they buy/download/acquire will work on their phones. I would be surprised if more than a small percentage of multitasking smartphone users use any multitasking features besides music, messaging and GPS.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
I upgraded the OS on my 3GS, and I can't get anything from the Exchange server now. It's just giving me "can't connect to server." (Interestingly, it pulls my list of Inbox folders but not my mail or calendar, and still tells me it can't connect.)
It worked fine before the OS upgrade to the phone, and nothing's changed on the Exchange environment. (I'm the Exchange admin.)
There seem to be lots of posts about this on Apple's site, but nothing I have tried has fixed this issue yet.
So if you have an iPhone and sync with an Exchange server.... WAIT to upgrade until they patch this.
"The day Apple makes iPhone available on Verizon, the market for Android devices will take an enormous hit."
Apple should have released it on Verizon 6 months ago. Apple is letting Google's platform become firmly entrenched, and now that hardware manufacturers don't have to write their own OS, they can provide all kinds of interesting handset features. This will rapidly become a PC versus Mac type battle.
The point is, if Apple waits another year to release to Verizon, the impact will be interesting, but it will be too late to have the kind of impact you think.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Your face is wrong :p
But seriously though.
If you think of the iPhone as an appliance and not a computer, then it makes perfect sense.
I often hear this argument, and my response is always the same: it doesn't matter how you spin it, it doesn't matter what you call it, it doesn't matter what you "think of it as"...the fact is, Apple offers a restricted product while others offer an unrestricted product. I have a choice as a consumer, and I've made one.
Living With a Nerd
From a developer's perspective, iOS is the platform to beat.
Median iOS developer income per app: $682 per year.
Da Blog
You realize that your entire argument goes down the drain with that one exception?
How about if you wanted to take down notes with your phone WHILE watching said instructive YouTube video?
Point is, people have perfectly legitimate, non-time-wasting reasons to "bellyache" (as you so put it) for multitasking. Don't treat those reasons as unimportant (implicit from your accusation that "they have already decided that their time isn't valuable") just because *you* don't have those reasons.
I hope you don't mind me omitting the trollish end of your sentence. I *do* switch between the web browser and the maps app on my Android phone when navigating on foot to somewhere, with the web browser bringing up the website of my destination (to get address details that the map won't show, e.g. when the destination is inside a mall).
Even though it's one USER task, those are still two PHONE tasks running at the same time. I expect my phone to keep up with me. 5 to 6 seconds is an awfully long time when you're running late.
Needless to say I'm quite glad I've been able to do what I do on my Android long before *anyone* can do it on an iPhone, thanks to multitasking.
Heck my older Nokia 6680 has been doing it way before these new-fangled phones, and I've always found it useful.
I wonder what the obsession is with your kind about BASHING the existence of multitasking on phones.
Pet peeve: Profane people propagating perfunctory pedantry.
Microsoft? Can you install anything you like on a Zune? No. Can you install what you want on an XBox 360? No. Will you be able to install freely on a Kin or other Windows Phone 7 series device? No. Comparing Windows to iPhones is comparing apples and clay bricks.
Apple are NOT falling behind, because only a TINY fraction of users are tech-geeks who "need" full control over their device. The ONLY thing propping Android up is the Google support, there have been other open platforms and they failed. Why? Because the openness is not in demand by the majority of the market. It would not surprise me if the three million iPads sold in three months exceed the total number of Windows-based tablets manufactured since the release of Windows 3 Pen Edition back in the day...
Most people want something that just works. Which is what Apple sells.
"see... if I touch here, it does this.ll but if I let go... look! This thing is messed up!"
I hope I'm not the first to call bullshit on all the reported reception problems. All these iphone owners have a single phone, and widely reported anacdotal evidence of fewer bars when you pick it up isn't fucking science and means absolutely nothing at all. Gizmodo's Jason Chen broke this non-story, and failed to do even the tiniest amount of research which would have yielded that since the inception of cell phone technology, a cell phone that is sitting perfectly still will get better reception that one you are waving around. Also, I'd like to point out that each iPhone release was plagued by false reports of reception problems. It's all bullshit. Yes, I don't doubt what you are rabidly saying, that you lose bars when you pick it up, what I'm telling you guys is that it is known and expected behavior. It's a cell phone. That's one of the things they've always done.
The Admin and the Engineer