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NVIDIA's Tegra 3 Outruns Apple's A5 In First Benchmarks
MojoKid writes "NVIDIA's new Tegra 3 SoC (System on a Chip) has recently been released for performance reviews in the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime Android tablet. Tegra 3 is comprised of a quad-core primary CPU complex with a 5th companion core for lower-end processing requirements and power management. The chip can scale up to 1.4GHz on a single core and 1.3GHz on up to four of its cores, while the companion core operates at 500MHz. It makes for a fairly impressive new tablet platform and offers performance that bests Apple's A5 dual-core processor in more than a few tests. The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime with optional keyboard dock and NVIDIA's Tegra 3 is set to be available in volume sometime around December 19th."
I have the first Transformer, I'm very pleased with it.
*sigh*
Tegra 3 is faster than the A5? Whoopty-doo. You know why Apple is winning the tablet and phone market? Here's a hint: It's not about specs anymore. When it comes to tablets, people don't care about benchmarks or who's got the fastest RAM. We (Slashdot geeks) might, but the rest of the world couldn't give a flying fuck. It's about user experience. And Apple's got that all wrapped up in a pretty little bow. Whereas none of their competitors do (HP came close, and we'll see about Ice Cream Sandwich but my educated guess is "probably not good enough for the average person").
So yeah, run all the benchmarks you want NVIDIA, but when it comes down to actual concrete sales, Apple's still going to eat you for breakfast.
New, unreleased processor faster than old, widely available processor.
Really? Comparing benchmarks? All this time, and you people still don't get it.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
A quad-core (technically quint-core) processor with 30% higher clock rates (40% higher for single core applications) is faster than a dual-core processor - I think saying "stating the obvious" is beyond redundant.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Apple is currently ahead in the tablet market. They also had the best performing tablet when it came out. The Prime might be better but it's about 9 months after the iPad2.
Apple is currently being outsold by almost 2:1 by Android phones. Android phones are also the best performing phones out there.
If Apple's user experience was that much better, and specs didn't matter anymore, then why isn't Apple winning the phone race too?
Dear MojoKid and all other slashdot submitters,
When providing a link to an article, please provide a link to the first page or the one page printer version. I don't really give a fuck what page you happened to be on when you decided to copy and paste the link into your submission, I generally choose to read articles starting at the beginning.
Thanks, .01% of that actually reads TFAs
The
Of the linked benchmarks:
LINPACK: "Unfortunately, the iOS version of Linpack is different enough that we couldn't compare iPad 2 numbers in this test, and still get an apples-to-apples match-up (no pun intended)."
BrowserMark: Transformer is 11% faster than iPad2
SunSpider: iPad2 is 9% faster than Transformer
GLBenchmark Fill: iPad2 is 230% faster than Transformer
GLBenchmark Egypt: Transformer is 25% faster than iPad2
An3DBench: "This is an Android-only benchmark, so unfortunately the iPad 2 couldn't play here."
So a new chip beats a 9 month old chip in more than a few tests? What a shocker.
I have the first Transformer, I'm very pleased with it.
Does it change into a car or plane when you need it to?
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
You compare a just released chip to an Apple product. I'm going to skip explaining how and why you're wrong and just skip to calling you a moron:
You're a moron!
Does Apple outsell Android phones on carriers where both are offered?
A new 5 core chip is faster than an older dual core chip. Who'd have thunk it
It's funny that the reason Apple is winning always changes whenever something comes out that bests something that was previously stated as one of those reasons. The walled garden, and UI are always those reasons, but performance was too.
Here's a hint: It's not about specs anymore.
You're right... they should just throw a MHz-clocked tablet out there for the enthusiast crowd.
So a newer platform beats out and older one: this is not news. It is likely that whenever the iPad 3 comes out, with whatever processor (some sort of quad core A6? faster-clocked A5? off-die coprocessors?) it will have a slight edge over this Tegra 3 platform. Competing technology companies leapfrog each other (or themselves) for bragging rights (and when comparing two different tablets with two different OSes, running different native apps, that's really all this is). Such has been the march of computing since, well, ever.
Winning? Apple is winning when they are losing market share?
They are by no means winning, but damn those are some low standards you got... phanboi
Whereas none of their competitors do (HP came close, and we'll see about Ice Cream Sandwich but my educated guess is "probably not good enough for the average person")...
Please do elaborate on how HP came close...
Seriously? This is on the front page? First of all, should that really be a surprise that a brand new, quad core chip can beat a 9 month old, slower, dual core? Secondly, Apple's success has NEVER been due to its high performance, it has always been about the shiny factor and the intuitive software design. I am personally excited about the arms race we are seeing in tablets, and hope to see high end Android tablets gain more traction, but this is just silly.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
When it comes to tablets, people don't care about benchmarks or who's got the fastest RAM. We (Slashdot geeks) might, but the rest of the world couldn't give a flying fuck. It's about user experience.
Did you even see what Transformer actually is? There's nothing even remotely close to that in "Apple experience" today.
And, as it happens, this story isn't about devices - it's about chipsets. If you don't care about that, why bother to post? This is Slashdot, after all. News for nerds.
They are. They make the most profits and are single most successful vendor. All Android enthusiasts seem to make the same logical fallacy over and over again.
Android is not a company. It's completely irrelevant if 200 companies combined can outsell one (1) company if that single company outsells each of them individually. Just because Motorola and Samsung makes Android phones doesn't mean they are BFFs. Every single Android phone maker competes with all the other Android vendors. Apple makes 52% of all the whole phone profits. All the other 200 phone maker have to share the remaining 48%.
Apple IS winning. No one except Fanbois is interested in combined market share of some random companies. Companies thrive for profits, not marketshare. They are often correlated, but not necessarily.
Apple took home 52% of Q3 Smartphone Profits on just *4.2% market share* (source: forbes.com 11/4/2011). I'd pretty much call that "winning". For comparison, Samsung and Apple basically ship the same number of phones. But Samsung captured just 29% of the profit. Apple's making almost double in profit per phone.
Whistling as hard as you can past the graveyard aren't you?
Apple is "winning" the tablet war for two reasons:
1) They had a good year lead in entering the market (actually more since the first Android tablets weren't designed to be tablets and were released against Google's recommendation).
2) They have a cult of fanboys who would literally buy anything with the Apple logo on it and those people then pressure other people to get Apple products to "be cool".
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
They're comparing something that's coming out soon (TM) vs something I've had for over 8 months! I sure hope it beats the ipad2 in benchmarks. All these numbers games are silly. It used to matter when I was building 486 DX50 desktops vs a 486 DX2-66 ... but not so much these days. There's a very very very small percentage of people that would care and/or notice.
Wow, I guess I've become an old man! Complaining about you kids are your silly games. My apologies. </rant>
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
Only on AT&T and that's because (until they lost the iPhone exclusivity agreement recently), they intentionally carried only lower end Android phones and disabled features like side-loading apps.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
If you're one of Apple's phone competitors, these charts should make you burst into tears. Apple is making 2/3 of the total profits in the entire industry, even if they aren't selling 2/3s of the phones.
Here, I FTFY
A 1.3GHz quad-core is faster than a 800MHz dual-core? Whoopty-doo. You know why people buy Apple products? Here's a hint: It's not about specs anymore. When it comes to computers, tablets and phones, people don't care about benchmarks or who's got the fastest RAM. We (Slashdot geeks) might, but the rest of the world couldn't give a flying fuck. It's about user experience. And Apple's got that all wrapped up in a pretty little bow tie. Because bow ties are cool. Whereas none of their competitors do (Windows 7 came close, but they're too moronic to realize that all the pretty animations in Mac OS X serve a purpose, so they bolted useless animations unto Windows hoping that people would be too stupid to realize the difference).
So yeah, run all the benchmarks you want, but when it comes down to actual user satisfaction, Apple's still going to eat you for breakfast.
Your speaking as if releasing 12,000 different phone models was some sort of cheating. It isn't.
And the world isn't only the US. Yes AT&T had the iPhone exclusivity in the US but in many other countries it's the opposite. Here in Canada the iPhone is the only phone on all carriers. Android phones tend to be released on a single carrier and often 6 months late (after an European/US launch), which gives a huge advantage to the iPhone.
"Comprises" would suffice. The proper usage of "to comprise" != that of "to (be) compose(d of)".
To confuse the two is to hasten the now-seemingly-inevitable death of a perfectly good word.
A useful guide: if you think you can substitute any uncommon word or phrase for a more common word or phrase with no change whatsoever in meaning or the structure of your sentence, you probably ought to check a dictionary first.
Same die size, they significantly cut power consumption in nearly every area, and they have significantly faster max speeds. I don't know why everyone seems to think this is 'nothing'. Gains like this without shrinking the die is a very impressive feat.
And here I just escaped black friday with my specially priced Acer A500. I'm not going to lie, I want.
They need faster processors to deal with CarrierIQ's overhead on looking at everything you do and sending them every keystroke.
Now, in true slashdot fashion I have not RTFA, so I don't know what benchmarks they're running. But in my mind, I question whether even a dual core processor is useful on a tablet. I mean really... how much intense computation is required by a tablet? How many threads are ever going to be run? It's not like you'll be running a simulation in the background while you watch a netflix movie on a tablet. Will anyone ever see the performance advantage of a 4-core ARM chip outside of benchmarks?
If you're making them for less than $200 and selling them for about $850, you are going to make money. So, just saying...
It's about user experience. And Apple's got that all wrapped up in a pretty little bow. Whereas none of their competitors do (HP came close, and we'll see about Ice Cream Sandwich but my educated guess is "probably not good enough for the average person").
I keep trying to figure out what people mean by iOS's user experience. I've got a transformer with the dock. Absolutely love it. Notifications are simple and unobtrusive. There is a back button that works.
I borrowed an iPad for a week and had to keep reminding myself NOT to throw it against the wall since it wasn't mine. At any point the damned thing needed to open a browser or map from one app the way back was not apparent and I ended up hitting the home button and needing to navigate back to where I was in the original app. In Honeycomb, I just hit the back button and I'm back. I guess if all you do is play Angry Birds it would seem pretty simple.
Don't take this as a flame. I'm really interested in why someone who uses both iOS and Android on a regular basis would say that iOS has a better user experience. I develop on and use both, but my personal iPod Touch is used for nothing more than a source of music on my alarm clock and in my Jeep. I dread using it for anything else.
And as an owner of the original Palm Pre I can certainly say that WebOS beats them both by a mile. Too bad the hardware was such shite and the limitations in the API were woeful.
Post anonymously - For when your opinion embarrasses even you!
What is irrelevant, from a user perspective, is the amount of profit that a company makes. In fact, if the company I buy a phone from loose money on every sale, it probably means that I made a better deal. If on the other hand they make a 50% profit, I probably got screwed. I never understood how Apple users could be proud of Apple making such a high profit. I never saw anyone proud of buying oil from ExxonMobile because they make more profit than the competition.
I don't care if there a 1 or 200 companies selling phones for a platform. What I cares about is the popularity of that platform since it gives a good indication of upcoming support (by application developers). I wouldn't buy a WP7 or a WebOS device even if I liked the OS because of that. Those platform don't have a guaranteed future. But most importantly what matters the most is who makes the best phone for my needs. I don't care who makes it.
Uh-huh. And what effect does all this high performance have on the containing tablet's battery life?
Lemmings are silly; dinosaurs are extinct.
The irony is that while more people prefer android to iOS in the phone market now, people continue to point to Apple winning because they still have more profits as if that is a good thing. It really means they are giving you less for your money that isn't any better and thus they make more money. Popular opinion has already shown that people don't prefer iOS to Android, just that Apple has better marketing at getting people to overspend. Good for shareholders, not for consumers and fanboyz.
AJ Henderson
Yeah, Android is doing very well on Verizon because VZW put more effort into Android back when AT&T had iPhone exclusivity.
For a LONG time it was clear that AT&T was intentionally holding back Android device releases to avoid pissing off Apple. What Android devices AT&T had were either way underspecced or had massive carrier crippling.
AT&T is still pretty bad in this regard. What Apple's worst nightmare should be is some manufacturer growing big enough balls to tell AT&T to go fuck themselves as far as carrier mangling goes.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
And only a fanboy would be proud of such a "win". Next time you buy an iPhone, give an extra $200 to Apple. This way, they will "win" even more.
Apple is winning the revenue per sale and revenue per app store sale. So while us nerds don't care about these numbers, the businesses do.
If I want to make the most amount of money, I'll build my apps for the iPad/iPhone. If I want a little more money I'll crosscompile it to Android 4, but nothing less. See this is the problem. The hardware vendors really don't give a shit about trying to maintain a consistent user experience from Android device to Android device, and any software targeted for 4 isn't going to work on any older devices. If I target the iPhone, it runs on all of them.
So what is the best use of my time? iOS.
Don't get me wrong, we need to see the exit of all the shitty I-don't-give-a-fuck Android manufacturers who are only using Android because it's free. And once building Android apps in C/C++ is like building iOS apps in C/C++/OBJC, I'd expect Android to largely be the Microsoft Windows of the Tablet world.
But that's not happening any time soon. 95% or so of iPhone/iPad users are satisified compared to like 60% for Android. That tells me that Android development should not be a priority and get the iOS version out first.
Bottom line, which runs longer w/o charge? Specs are good, but that one's a biggie...
I own the Samsung Galaxy tablet. At launch it had high specs and all.. But yet, the experience is laggy with occasionnal freezes.. is hardware the real performance, or it's the actual responsiveness that matters most?
I'd rather have lower specs but smoother response....
THIS. FINALLY.
Couldn't have put it better myself. Ppl that don't get it are morons.
Tegra 3, an unreleased chip that you won't be able to actually get in a shipping product for several months at least, is faster than the A5, a chip that's been in shipping products for the last six months.
Seriously. Apple's not doing too badly on specs either, apparently.
You know the term... "Once you go black, you never go back." The same goes for Apple.... once you've accustomed yourself to using the iphone ui, odds are, you will ALWAYS end up comparing it when trying to make the switch. I've had countless of friends who are not geeks, or tech saavy, and they all ended up going back to Apple, simply because the flow, ease of use, and the fact that they are used to it.... If it ain't broke.....
It's not cheating, but it's (non-deliberately) deceptive when it comes to the measures that matter to companies. "Android" is not a model of phone any more than "Windows" is a model of computer. Even with only 5-7% of the computer market, Apple has been one of the more profitable computer manufacturers for the last decade or so. Compare Windows to OSX and Apple is clearly "losing". Compare Mac sales to Dell sales or HP sales and Apple is doing almost phenomenally well. Similarly with phones. iOS is "losing" to Android by a lot of measures, but Apple is doing better than any other vendor of smartphones. Apple is "winning in the phone market" because they consistently make and sell more phones than any one other vendor (and probably make more money per phone to boot). They aren't necessarily winning in the phone OS market, but that's OK.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Could it be that Android phones are cheap?
One may argue that Android tablets are also cheaper, but a phone is (almost) a necessity, whereas a tablet is a luxury item. If you have to buy something, you go buy the one you can afford. If you don't have to, you just wait to be able to afford the one you actually like.
Search RapidShare and MegaUpload!
Write your app for iOS. And sell it for $100 if you want. I don't care, because I won't buy it. I am sure that there are free alternatives that are just as good anyway.
Good for you if some people actually buy your app by the way. Good for you if it makes you rich. But I don't see why I would buy an iOS product because of that. I am not going to buy your app anyway.
Open a handful of apps. Switch between them. Now lock it and put it away for a couple of hours. Now unlock it: quick, where does "Back" take you?
Double-click on the iOS home button and you get the application switcher, so you can get back to any other running app, exactly in the state you left it.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
All true, but it turns out the manufacturers like to mangle the phones too. Sure, they don't want to put VCAST this, V-CRAP that on it. But they want to put Blur, TouchWiz, and Sense on them (plus whatever the garbage one that LG uses). All of these are annoyances that just add bugs. They don't believe they can differentiate themselves sufficiently by just making good hardware. They have to crap the phones up, make them slow, etc. and compete on "whose is the least f'ed up" instead.
Your speaking as if releasing 12,000 different phone models was some sort of cheating. It isn't.
Of course it's not cheating. But what it is doing is making the metric meaningless. Yes technically you can say Android is shipping more devices, but when you don't know how many are not really being used as a smartphone, or with apps at all to claim it's equivalent to iPhone sales is madness.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You might have an argument for investing into Apple over Dell/HP/Microsoft. But you certainly don't have an argument about why a consumer should be getting an Apple device.
The fact that Microsoft is winning the PC OS war and that Google is winning the phone OS war are useful metrics on their own. It might just not be the numbers you are looking to as an investor, but that doesn't mean that they are irrelevant.
"If Apple's user experience was that much better, and specs didn't matter anymore, then why isn't Apple winning the phone race too?"
There might be a few reasons... One, some people hate Apple and will never by a phone from them. Two, some people don't want to look like a trendy boob and will buy anything but an iPhone to avoid that, even if they like the iPhone. Three, some people aren't willing to pay that much for a phone. Finally, some people just don't care. They aren't going to switch carriers for an iPhone, they just go into the store and grab whatever is on offer.
I think those add up to a lot of Android sales. My wife and I both switched from iPhone to Android phones. She was skeptical, but she really likes it now. I must have heard "oh, it just lets me do that" 50 times the first week. It was very liberating for her, especially not being tethered to iTunes. Oddly enough the only thing i think we really miss is the easy backup/restore process iTunes does. It's not as simple a task on Android.
I fucking hate people like you who let their hatred blind them. No matter how you feel about the company, they make WORLD CLASS systems. To totally disparage the technical merits of what they do because of how they market is childish. If Apple made products that didnt work very well, we wouldnt really talk about them on slashdot.
Good-bye
I personally paid the same $200 for my $699 phone as an Android user paid for his $499 phone and pay the same monthly fee.
Why should I care that the carrier had to pay a higher subsidy to Apple?
Cite?
Pardon the pun but we are comparing Apple and Oranges. The Asus Transformer is designed to be a laptop/tablet hybrid so I can see this chip being used to its potential. But to make the assertion that faster is better in a purely tablet form is a stretched because for things that I actually use a tablet for (yes I have an iPad 2) the CPU is being wasted. How fast do I really need my calendar, email, iSSH, Rhapsody, Netflix, HBOgo, and notepad to go? They perform exceptionally well now.
As a embedded systems guy, I'm interested in the Tegra 3. Outside of the Intel family, our shop has two classes of custom boards. The ones based on actual ARM or PowerPC cpus this is where the Tegra3 has a shot, and the other being boards designed around the Virtex series FPGAs that our FPGA guys are smitten with and it would take extinction event to be able to pry that out of their cold dead hands. :P
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
If I have a choice between a $200 iPhone and a $200 HTC smartphone, it doesn't matter to me how much each one makes on it. It's not my fault HTC has to pay a tax to Microsoft for patents, or that they don't have the ability to lock in lower prices on components like Apple does. But it does matter to the phone manufacturers.
If it was based on the z80, I'd buy one.....
meant to say, those reasons alone probably add up to a lot of Android sales and none of them have anything to do with user experience.
The thing that's been discussed along those lines is that Apple had a couple years to get its supply chain in order before the release of the iphone. Everybody else has been playing catch up by trying to combine off the shelf components in the most appealing fashion they can. Since no one has really found a magic recipe for building a perfect Android/WinMo phone and everyone wants to differentiate their product somehow, economies of scale and supply chain efficiencies haven't really been working in anyone's favor.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
How is Google "winning" when 66% of Google searches on mobile come from iOS device:
http://www.gadgetvenue.com/google-mobile-searches-made-up-of-66-ios-09223009/
And after spending billions on development, buying MMI, and patents they still only make $6 dollars per phone?
Especially when the most popular Android tablet (the Amazon Fire) uses no Google services?
Winning all the way to the poorhouse :
Motorola Mobility revenue misses, net loss narrows
Samsung phone sales drop 14%, profit drops 30%
HTC Is In Big Trouble: It Just Slashed Revenue Guidance Again
Just like PC vendors did under Windows' dominance.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
If Apple made products that didnt work very well, we wouldnt really talk about them on slashdot.
Not being able to hold the phone while using it because you block the antenna kind of fit my definition of 'didn't work very well'. Only Steve Jobs could get away with something like that, imagine the ridicule if a new Android phone had been released which cost much more than comparable phones and had a similar flaw.
You're right that Android is an OS while the iPhone is hardware, but nobody is stopping Apple from open sourcing (or even licensing for a fee) their operating system to those 12,000 handset manufacturers. Similarly nobody is stopping Apple from offering a range of handsets to meet different requirements and different budgets and trying to capture more of those niche markets. Apple chooses to do neither because their current model is profitable, and this is probably the right move for them, but it's still a truism that phones with the Android OS outsell Apple phones - there's nothing deceptive about it. In a way, Android's strength in the market place is its diveristy while Apple's is arguably its lack of diversity.
All this competition between those phones and tablets... all I hear is Apple this, Android that, sometimes a thing or two about HTC.
Microwho?
It finally happened.
They are winning because they are on more smartphones being sold these days. Remember I said phones, not mobile devices. Apple is still winning the tablet and the MP3 player war.
It doesn't help that Android phones also seem to be advertised to adolescent boys who like robots and women in tight black jumpsuits fighting in a dark rooms.
Shouldn't a quad core + "companion core" beat that A5 on *all* tests?
All true, but it turns out the manufacturers like to mangle the phones too. Sure, they don't want to put VCAST this, V-CRAP that on it. But they want to put Blur, TouchWiz, and Sense on them (plus whatever the garbage one that LG uses). All of these are annoyances that just add bugs. They don't believe they can differentiate themselves sufficiently by just making good hardware. They have to crap the phones up, make them slow, etc. and compete on "whose is the least f'ed up" instead.
I've recently been happy with a sony-e xperia product. sure, they put some crap on it, but it's mostly widgets and downloading a home screen replacement from the market works wonders too, so I don't actually see any of the sony-e brand stuff. and least they didn't fuck up listviews.
oh and perhaps, just perhaps people would be more interested in if it beats exynos, not a5.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
So, 9 months later they have a chip faster on "some" tests in a unit functionally inferior to the Apple products at and spec level. Yes you can root the alternatives to Apple hardware, but you can jailbreak Apple products to and have an Apple ecosystem as a backup or optional feature set.
This feels like an unconfusing choice for either consumers or hackers.
JJ
"Apple phenomenon" takes away any doubt as to why the modern world is in such financial trouble."
People buying a product they like, causing financial trouble?
Apple is loosing market share because increase competition. Apples iPhone had a 2 year head start over the other phones. That was 2 years of being the only player in the game. Then the competition came out. Naturally people will buy the other devices.
Apple has always released the Cadillac of personal computing. Just like Cadillac's they may not be the fastest, or have the most impeded features but it has the right amounts placed in a way that makes it luxurious. Now some of the competing products are making their versions of Honda's, Toyota's, Ford's... Which are nice and have features that are better then the Cadillac but still they are not the Cadillac.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
So if Google gives away Android with the hopes of recouping costs via advertising, then how are they "winning" if 66% of mobile searches come from Apple -- to whom they reportedly pay $100 Million/ a year to be the default search provider?
Open a handful of apps. Switch between them. Now lock it and put it away for a couple of hours. Now unlock it: quick, where does "Back" take you?
Double-click on the iOS home button and you get the application switcher, so you can get back to any other running app, exactly in the state you left it.
At least on my android you can hold the home button down to get the app switching you are talking about. I'm not sure what this comment was supposed to be showing...
Android is winning. Whether this turns out into profits for Google or not is an other issue.
Just like IE for Microsoft. It is still the most popular browser so they are winning. It's a free browser so it's unclear if they make any money with it, especially since Google remains the most popular search engine.
If that's true, why can I buy 100,000 battery cradles, camera add ons, cases, credit card readers, sushi makers and personal massager extensions for my iphone but there are barely any Android specific accessories besides a few cases and some carrier marketed dash/desk mounts. I'll tell you why. The Samsung Galaxy S II HD Prime XD Touch SDHC AMOLED+ Carbon Fibre Edition (tm) doesn't use the same peripherals as the Nexus Prime Squared Factorial 4. The iPhone 4 and 4s have given accessories manufacturers essentially 1 shape/interface with which to build an accessory for a potential market of 100m+ users.
Great Android selling phones do about 10% of a single iPhone model. There are 3 significant iPhone models still in the wild and 2 of them and 90+% of the volume are the same form factor. Is there a Moto Droid RAZR Deli Slicer 7.1 Kevlar port in your car? No, but my Elantra came with an iPhone dock (as does about 70% of US automobiles.)
If we can actually get to TFA! Shocker that a chip that has only been available in engineering samples is outpacing a chip that shipped in a device in March. So in other news, chips get faster over time? Shocked. Even if this were important (and it isn't) this is not a fair fight. All it does is give Apple a benchmark/target to aim for with the A6 or what ever it will be that they ship in the iPad 3 in about 3-4 months, which oh by the way, will be showing up about the same time that a device with this chip in it makes it to market too.
It's not just about chip speed. It's about battery life, user experience, polish, and efficiency. The quicker the Android licensees stops marketing their phones like they are hocking graphics cards in 2004 the sooner one of them will have an individual hit.
Sense is awesome, it genuinely adds to the user experience. When I'm up for a replacement on my EVO Shift I'm hoping Sprint has a new slider from HTC so I can get Sense again. The email app makes dealing with the large number of emails generated by our monitoring system as easy as it was on the Blackberry which no other phone I've used has been able to accomplish.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
You seem to be confused about Google's business model. It's not irrelevant to them if 200 companies can outsell the iPhone - that's a hell of a lot of phone users looking at Google ads. They are more than happy for those 200 companies to fight it out with each other, producing better phones or shaving costs - if one or another manufacturer emerges as the dominant force for a time it doesn't impact Google's bottom line at all. Apple are on the top of the pile at the moment but their place in the market is tied entirely to their hardware - if people decide they don't want the next iPhone then that's a real problem for them (good news for us, of course, because it means plenty of healthy competition and UI advances, etc). Essentially Google has spread their risk much more thinly. If you think Apple are the unassailable hardware giant of the phone industry and have no need to fear these emerging upstarts, just go ask Nokia how tenuous that position can be.
At the outset of the IOS vs Android wars, i think IOS was clearly better in terms of experience. It made a priority out of indicating to the user that it was working on their request ex: touching an app icon immediately launched the splash screen for that app, vs android just kind of freezing for a bit while the app was loaded. It was streamlined without a lot of confusing options or paths you could take.
I don't think that's the case anymore. Android has improved a lot, and the phones and tablets i've seen over the past year seemed to provide a different, but comparable experience. I think people who claim that IOS is so superior in terms of experience don't really have a leg to stand on anymore. They are either blinded by fanboism, unaware that android has improved, or they are confusing familiarity with good ux.
I'm an iOS user. I feel lost on an android device, but i don't think it sucks. It's just different.
I personally just don't understand the user experience that is so nice about iOS. I have two iOS devices in my household (a iPod touch and my wife's iPhone) and they don't seem in any way better than my Android phone. They actually seem more tired and less interesting to me. There's nothing that is easier to me about using them (in fact some things seem harder to me as they tend to have a deeper/more confusing menu system for system settings). The main screen is just a bunch of icons/folders all sorted into a grid and a static background. I just don't see where this amazing user experience is that people talk about and I've used them a fair bit (the touch is mine and I played with it for a few months when I got it for Xmas last year till I got my Galaxy and I haven't looked back).
You mean like the HTC Sensation?
And the majority of users had no antenna problems. It required holding it a very particular way which most people didn't.
So "winning" for a publicly traded company is "losing billions of dollars" to gain market share?
In that case, I guess I will cut my leg off to win the corporate weight loss challenge.....
No offense, but Apple's got marketing ... the experience side I've experienced is different.
Nearly every person who sees my wife using her new Motorola Droid3 or me using my Dell Streak 5 ask which IPhone we have (lol). Then we show them our customized home screens with information instantly visible, from calendar appointments (I use S2 calendar widgets) to recent friend updates to weather forecasts. Then she slides out the very nice keyboard on hers, or more likely demonstrates how fast it is to enter text with Swype or voice on Android, and how you can instantly jump between recently used apps that are still running in the background, and they're sold.
I haven't met a single IPhone user who says "oh my phone can do that better" yet. The only thing I've heard in favour of an IPhone from its users is "it makes me feel good."
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Or single-tap the Android application switcher icon, so you can get back to any other running app, exactly in the state you left it.
I have a Transformer and love it. The optional keyboard with full-size SD slot, USB ports and extra battery is a real plus.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
...film at 11.
0 1 - just my two bits
You can order a Transformer Prime with a Tegra 3 right now and have it before Christmas.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
Not everyone accept to locks himself into proprietary accessories. Being locked into using iTunes and proprietary dock accessories is one of the reasons some people don't buy iPhones.
Once you take that path, you can't get out.
The hardware vendors really don't give a shit about trying to maintain a consistent user experience from Android device to Android device, and any software targeted for 4 isn't going to work on any older devices. If I target the iPhone, it runs on all of them.
There are plenty of Apps in the marketplace that don't run on older model iPhones, either because there is some missing hardware component or the phone simply isn't quick enough. Whether it's the more profitable platform for you depends more on you than the platform - if you're writing very simplistic applications there's no reason they won't work on older Android devices, in which case you might find that the advertising driven payment model of Android is better for you. On the other hand, if you have lots of ideas for high quality apps that will attract paying users and you want to focus on writing those and not supporting multiple platforms, there's almost certainly more margin with the iPhone. In between that there are people who don't have lots of great ideas, they have one or two and they want to maximise the profit in them, they'll provide the app in both places. Ultimately what makes the platform attractive to you as a developer is meaningless, because no two developers are alike, and there are more than enough people developing for both platforms that the users aren't going to suffer a lack of applications.
Apple's mobile success is due at least in part to the vibrancy of their app store. Now that there are 2 Android handsets for every iOS handset, and there are more Java developers than Objective C developers out there, the quality apps either also support Android, or sometimes come to Android first, and possibly only.
That will hurt Apple's presence, as it may already be doing - it looks like Samsung may be outselling Apple (which probably explains all the specious legal acrobatics Apple is tossing at Samsung).
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Of the linked benchmarks:
LINPACK: "Unfortunately, the iOS version of Linpack is different enough that we couldn't compare iPad 2 numbers in this test, and still get an apples-to-apples match-up (no pun intended)."
BrowserMark: Transformer is 11% faster than iPad2
SunSpider: iPad2 is 9% faster than Transformer
GLBenchmark Fill: iPad2 is 230% faster than Transformer
GLBenchmark Egypt: Transformer is 25% faster than iPad2
An3DBench: "This is an Android-only benchmark, so unfortunately the iPad 2 couldn't play here."
Of those, the Egypt Offscreen test is where the iPad 2 fared the worst. Except that on every other benchmark site, their iPad 2 numbers for that exact benchmark are 50% higher than Hot Hardware's results (the tegra 3 numbers are comparable), which puts the iPad 2 hugely ahead in GPU performance.
To say that he summary is misleading is correct, but that glosses over the fact that the data in the original article is wrong.
It depends on how you phrase the question. Apple is "winning in the phone market" (the claim made in the original post people are arguing with) because they sell more product and make more money than any of their competitors in the phone market. At least the smartphone market, which is what we're talking about here. They outsell Samsung, HTC, Nokia, even RIM I think, in the phone market, because those are their competition in that market. They are not beating Google in the phone OS market, but it's not clear that they care. The phone OS "market" is somewhat nebulous and unprofitable anyway. other than Microsoft (who sell licenses to their OS) no one is making money in that market. Google provides a royalty free OS to various vendors, and everyone else sells a phone/OS marriage (everyone else being pretty much Apple and RIM at this point, though their may still be a few Palm devices floating around int the channel somewhere).
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
I find it interesting that Apple users are a cult, while rabid Android supporters are just fine.
No, I don't have Apple stuff.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Again, it's how you phrase the question. Apple is winning in phone market. They sell more phones and make more money that anyone else in that market. they aren't winning on the platform "war" such as it is. It's not clear that it matters to them as long as they are selling stupid numbers of phones nad making more money than they can spend.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Could it be that Android phones are cheap?
Some are. Some are more expensive. Some are more powerful, some have hardware keyboards, some have stylus input, some come bundled with suites of useful apps, some are unbranded and give the user more control. As a customer, choice is good.
Apple doesn't need the fastest hardware—it only needs hardware that will run its OS fast enough. Because the only thing that matters is if the machine feels responsive enough. If it does, then it works.
It's also important to note that Apple has a sort of advantage in these things in that they basically make the whole system, start to finish. The A5 is designed specifically for running iOS devices, and iOS is designed to run on the A5. Apple has a pretty good level of control over both the hardware and software. Meanwhile, companies like Samsung and HTC are using other people's operating systems and other people's chips, and then cobbling them together in a hodge-podge solution, and then putting more customizations on top of that for the sake of branding and competition.
Because of this, it's possible that Apple's competition could have a chip that's a little more powerful and can push a few more calculations per second, but that Apple's device would still perform better for real-world applications. It's not necessarily the case, but when you have the level of control that they do, you can really tweak and optimize the crap out of everything.
Well it is relevant if as a user you (1) want the manufacturer to support the phone after you buy it and (2) want the manufacturer to keeps making that particular model. Why do you think many Android phones have such inconsistent update history and support? Because they make so little money off some models that they don't care. If you buy a new iPhone you get about 2 years of software updates and you can walk into any Apple store and get support in the 1st year. Apple can do that because of the profit they made. Now the average Slashdot user thinks he can root the phone and fix any issue but your average consumer doesn't know Xwindows from xfs.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
How unfortunate that you decided to quote quarter 1 figures for Samsung and not the newer and significantly more positive numbers for Q2 and Q3 -- A coincidence I'm sure.
I keep hearing this, but it is not borne out by reality. There would have to be an awfully large number of cult fanboys to sustain the kind of numbers Apple is posting. At what number do cult fanboys turn into satisfied customers?
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
The fact that anyone is even making ePenis comparisons like this shows how embarrassingly out of touch the "nerd" (versus "geek") population has become. None of this matters. It hasn't mattered for years. To cling to it as some basis for decision making, as if the ultimate Asperger's-addled answer to any question is to overlay a rational conceit even if it doesn't make any sense, is absurd.
None of this is relevant, as much as those of you who fear the evolution in the technology market would like to believe otherwise. The more you cling to this as a basis for building products, the more you'll lose in terms of influence. We've worked too hard to have a seat at the table -- do you really want to be shoved back in the server closet again? I don't know, maybe some of you would.
It's times like this I wish I had mod points.
Scratch that, it's times like this I wish I ran my own Slash site so I could invite you over.
It's not just about accessories. The Android software platform is as fractured as it gets, with a bazillion different versions, different hardware that simply cannot be trusted or relied upon. Some are great phones like the Samsung Galaxy line, and then a neverending stream of shit phones like, well, Huawei, Motorola, Alcatel... half-assed sweatshop garbage.
As a developer, even though Apple's walled garden is quite frustrating to navigate, I have less to worry about when developing iPhone apps vs Android or Blackberry, as if an app works on my iPhone, it's a pretty safe bet that it'll work on all of them. It's much like writing for a gaming console. There are only a few minor gotchas, that are trivially resolved during testing with the various simulators.
With Android, about half of my the bug reports I get must be replied with "I'm sorry, but your phone does not support rotation. Yes, the epileptic shimmering is normal on a Motorola. No, our app isn't slow, it's your goddamned korean knockoff phone. Congratulations, your device supports flash. Too bad it only has a 2.77 mhz processor without H.264 acceleration."
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Computing power matters. It's not sufficient of course, because success depends on what you do with that power, but more computing power makes new things possible.
Steve Jobs brilliance wasn't just in getting people working for him to create wonderful designs; he was a shrewd manager who streamlined Apple's product lines before he introduced new classes of product. But perhaps his greatest gift was timing. If he had tried to get into the tablet game back in 2001 when Microsoft did, he might have made a better product, but it wouldn't have been as successful as the iPad (although I did like the Newton, which he axed). Even if it were successful, Apple would have been playing leapfrog with other vendors as they rushed to take advantage of the next marginal improvement in hardware.
Instead he let the other guys discredit themselves, and waited until a number of stars had aligned: mobile CPU capability, power draw, display, cheap RAM, flash memory and battery technology. When those things could be assembled into a compelling, revolutionary product, then he moved. CPU power per watt must have been a big part of that decision. He didn't wait long after those things fell into place. If you replaced the 1GHz A4 in the first gen iPad with the 200-300 MHz XScale chips PDA vendors used a year or two earlier you could not have delivered the iPad experience.
So now that there's enough affordable oomph to make a usable tablet, does an increment of oomph make any difference? Not if you don't do anything new with it. But in tablets, user experience is perhaps the greatest constraint. There may well be killer app uses for tablets that are just a teensy bit too laggy to work.
So an increment of oomph matters quite a bit. Of course it's no reason to buy one tablet over another, but if I were still a developer I'd be watching the oomph race closely.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Nokia enjoyed the same position in the market for a decade. Ultimately they learned two valuable lessons to their detriment: 1) don't ingnore the competition and 2) don't ignore the customers.
On a phone vs. phone basis, Apple is winning. They have the top selling phones, but since there are roughly 12,000 different Android phones, they combined to sell more than Apple's handful of phones.
Yes, exactly. A phone-vs-phone basis is what "really" matters. What's more, we all know this from Apple's history: Since only Apple has produced Macs*, and each given generation of Macs sold more than any single computer made by Dell, HP, Lenovo, Gateway, etc, etc, that's why Macs clearly won the personal computer market for the past couple decades, since that's the only thing that "counts". It doesn't matter that Apple was near death and needed Saint Jobs to bail them the hell out. And it's also not like that sort of attitude didn't doom other companies before. Individual models of Macs sold more than any single, exact configuration of computer by any other manufacturer, so they technically won over Windows, just like how they're technically winning against Android despite being outsold 2-to-1 on an OS-vs-OS basis. I don't know why all these heathens refuse to acknowledge this fact.
*: Yes, I know there was a time when they licensed Macs out to other manufacturers, but since that's generally considered blasphemy and heresy to bring it up now in Apple fanboy circles, that counts even less than your desperate "phone vs. phone basis" nonsense.
Apple chooses to do neither, not only because it's profitable, but because it would kill their brand overnight.
The day you can install IOS on a piece of shit Huawei phone, is the day Apple's stock drops by half, because every inbred reality-show watching sack of parasitic shit on this dirt mount is going to buy the cheapest phone they can find on eBay, then complain that IOS runs slower than Chris Christie's metabolism.
I like the fact that when I sell an IOS app, it just works. I don't get hundreds of strange bug reports and crash logs from as many different devices. I don't have to own ten different phones just to test things on the most popular devices. I don't even need to look up the device specs, because there's only two Apple devices: iPhone, and iPad. If Apple starts licensing IOS to third parties, the platform will become irreversibly fractured, and I will have yet another reason to kill people.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Apple has always released the Cadillac of personal computing.
Yeah, right.
Back when I worked in a company that developed for Macs, the 'Cadillac' would crash multiple times just trying to print out a document whereas my 'Yugo' Sun workstation only got rebooted for hardware upgrades.
Even the PCs were more reliable than the Macs. Of course the fanboys were just as rabid as they are today.
And where is this reported? And where are you commenting right now?
Is it slashdot? Do you think some people here might be interested then?
*sigh*
Tegra 3 is faster than the A5? Whoopty-doo.
Yep. Pretty much all the Android tablet reviews so far have ended with "it's nice but it's a bit slow..."
(Which is what happens when you try to make a tablet for a quarter of the price of an iPad)
If this fixes that then iPad is dead.
Well, not dead, but expect the ratio of Android tablets to iPads to head in the same direction as the ratio of desktop PCs to desktop Macs, laptop PCs to Macbooks. ie. a Fraction of the market share.
No sig today...
Phones manufacturer do not update their phone because they make enough profit to do it. They update their phone if they think it will bring them more profit in the future. Apple is playing this game pretty well and one of the reason people buy iPhones is because of the software updates.
If there wasn't an Android, Google search on your phone would not be possible. Carriers and phone OEMs would be paid to lock in something else. So Google is winning because they get to be in your pocket, even on an iPhone.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The battery life on this new Asus pad is quite low, even compared to legacy Droid tablets like the Galaxy and Xoom. This is where Apple traditionally does well and they will continue to. It's a big deal for customers. So the iPad 3 is already listed in the latest iOS. It will be out mid 2012 and with 4 cores, some fancy new display and who knows what else. It will likely sell more in a month than the entire product run of the Asus Eee Pad.
It's about user experience.
Nobody I know seems to be having any trouble using their Android phones.
I've used both. There's not really much difference.
No sig today...
Exactly like a long-press on the home button of any Android device, you mean? "Back" is for stepping back through the steps of your current application, not for switching between applications - it's a nice feature that I've had for almost two years on my HTC that means I can click into a link on a search result and quickly back out if it's not what I wanted, without having to mess about with context menus or whatever.
You mean like the HTC Sensation?
And the majority of users had no antenna problems. It required holding it a very particular way which most people didn't.
Remember folks, fanboi-ism goes both ways.
Specifications matter when it comes to performance but many of Android manufacturers are bad at selling that to consumers. Apple is great at marketing because their ads are focused and clear. The consumer knows the purpose of the ad. The last Motorola Razr ad I saw would leave the consumer wondering if a new movie or video game called "The Razr" was coming out soon. As a contrast, see the original iPhone commercials. Each of the 4 highlighted a specific feature of the iPhone (and smart phones in general) and demoed how easy it was to use. To the average consumer, it was new. To a tech geek (I had a WM6 phone), it showed how Apple was different. When I saw web browsing on the iPhone, I thought it must have been faked as browsing on a WM6 sucked so bad.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
It's not that the Androids are cheap. It's that like the tablets they offer more choices. iPhone is great if it's what you want. But if you want a keyboard, removable battery, microSDHC, dualSIM, HDMI 1080p outputs, a different camera, a flip phone, a cheaper phone, a phone that comes in red... you're getting an Android.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This. Android phones really pulled Samsung's bacon out of the fire in Q3.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I work for a company that does marketing for both Apple and Android manufacturers. Trust me, they all have great marketing teams and big budgets. The success of the products isn't as simple as marketing.
The difference is that Apple takes the time to do both hardware AND software specifically so that they can build a unified consistent experience. Whereas Android manufacturers just slap the Android OS on the hardware and hope for the best.
To counter your anecdotes, time and time again I hear people bitching about their Android devices because it's slow, or software is buggy and inconsistent, or UI is confusing, etc. I think it's pretty telling that the "touch" event in the Android API is called "click".
I use iOS and my wife and daughter have android. Its all about preference, I can ask you the same thing? Why would you want to use an Android device? The only I want to do with my wife phone is slingshot it. So I will go back to , its all about preference, you like android and someone else probably likes iOS. Your trying to push what YOU perceive is being better than the other. These kind of questions are really just make no sense in asking.
Google Search was available for the iPhone before Android was introduced.
You mean like Google pays Apple $100 million a year to be the default search provider for iOS devices?
When has Apple *ever* allowed a carrier to install their crapware on iPhones?
Plus it largely affected AT&T users; in countries where the number of antennas are sufficient to provide a strong signal, the problem was absent also for the iPhone 4. And First World Problems, anyway.
3) They block competitors by winning bans that are later overturned.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
Irrelevant; if you wanted to go somewhere specific, you'd use the home button just like an iOS device, or if its something you used recently, you'd hold down the home button and pick from the MRU list.
The Android devices can do the same behaviours as the iOS devices, but the inverse is not true.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I protest against corporate greed. I have no job. I have a hard time paying my bills, and I bought the newest iPhone 4S that Apple has a 71% profit margin on. I may be mentally handicapped. I am the 99%. Occupyapplestores.org
some of the competition are also making their versions of their BMW and even Lamborghini.
The Cadillac still are not the BMW. What is your point?
I'm a 99-percenter, and even *I* think you're just spouting bizarro communist tripe. You say that profit is irrelevant, but then go into some masturbatory rant about how screwing the company into taking a loss equates to a "better deal" for you. It's not a better deal if you drive that company into bankruptcy and your device becomes unsupported 6 months down the road.
There is a very important distinction between profit and greed. Deriving pleasure from screwing someone over the deal, that's greed. I don't consider Apple a greedy company. They sell products people want, so they charge a premium for premium products. You get what you pay for. I think that's quite fair. Sure, the iPhone costs a bit more than an Android phone... so what ? If you're broke or cheap, get the Android. If instead, you're the type of person who doesn't mind spending a little more for something better, get the iPhone. End of story. It's not a political debate, it's a value dilemma.
I like my $1000 LCDs with retina-frying intensity and color fidelity. You might be perfectly content with the $199 LCDs that I gave away, because to me they were eyesores. I know their new owner is super happy with them. You have the freedom of choice, use it. And for the love of jebus, respect other people's freedom of choice too.
As for your second argument, WP7 and WebOS are doomed because everyone already knows they suck even worse than Blackberry. Android sucks less, which is why it's sticking around. It's close enough to IOS (relatively speaking), to justify its own existence. And frankly, a lot of people don't care about thier phone's OS, they just want a phone that can play Angry Birds.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
In iOS 5 you can switch between apps using a four-finger swipe. Only an issue with apps that don't deal well with being backgrounded...
If Apple's user experience was that much better, and specs didn't matter anymore, then why isn't Apple winning the phone race too?
It is. iPhone is the best selling smartphone in the world. The only way you can beat that is by adding together the sales of lots of different Android phones.
*sigh*
Tegra 3 is faster than the A5? Whoopty-doo. You know why Apple is winning the tablet and phone market? Here's a hint: It's not about specs anymore. When it comes to tablets, people don't care about benchmarks or who's got the fastest RAM. We (Slashdot geeks) might, but the rest of the world couldn't give a flying fuck. It's about user experience. And Apple's got that all wrapped up in a pretty little bow. Whereas none of their competitors do (HP came close, and we'll see about Ice Cream Sandwich but my educated guess is "probably not good enough for the average person").
So yeah, run all the benchmarks you want NVIDIA, but when it comes down to actual concrete sales, Apple's still going to eat you for breakfast.
Apple is currently ahead in the tablet market. They also had the best performing tablet when it came out. The Prime might be better but it's about 9 months after the iPad2. Apple is currently being outsold by almost 2:1 by Android phones. Android phones are also the best performing phones out there.
If Apple's user experience was that much better, and specs didn't matter anymore, then why isn't Apple winning the phone race too?
Well, I RTFA and the thing is 11%-25% faster depending on which one the Tegra 3 beat the A5 in. Not really that impressive given the thing has two more cores AND a higher clock speed. The 25% was in graphics FPS, by the way not CPU performance.
The irony is that while more people prefer android to iOS
More people don't "prefer" Android. Most people have never heard of Android. Android just happens to ship on a lot of different mobile phones.. Whilst iOS only ships on one series.
And the reason Apple is making more money have more to do with the economies of scale of selling just one series of phone rather than around 50 as for example Samsung does.
"NVIDIA's Tegra 3 Outruns Apple's A5 In First Benchmarks". Well, I would hope so. One would expect a quad-core (+1) chip running at 1.4GHz to outpace a similar design dual-core chip running at 1GHz... If it wasn't faster, I would be very concerned (if I were Nvidia).
Four finger swipe from right to left. Like you are shuffling a paper off to the side.
Microsoft is paying over $2B a year to keep their online efforts alive. Do you think they'd wince at outbidding Google's $100m here?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I think there is something still out there to want about specs. Because with these new processors we're getting closer and closer to laptop and desktop performance. Now we're getting to where you could say do I want to buy a new laptop or get this tablet instead. You look at the graphics in the games and you note that you can now use gamepad controls and hook it up to a tv and use it like a console and suddenly this device is even more worth it's cost as it has a greater range of uses.
people prefer android to iOS
You're going to have to show proof, because in my environment it's the exact opposite. In the entire software company, we all hate Android and BB with a passion, and no, we're not a design shop. We're a Linux-centric web shop that's branched out into mobile apps and sites. IOS isn't without its flaws, but overall it gives us one tenth the headaches of any other platform. On average I've needed twice as much time to port apps over to Android and BB (each), than to build the the original version for IOS. This is despite the fact that I have far more experience with Java than Objective-C, and yet I consider myself far more proficient in the latter after only 6 months since using XCode for the first time ever.
So, I say, after all of us have had plenty of hands-on experience with all 4 major mobile platforms, IOS is the unanimous winner. Did I mention we're Linux geeks ? Yeah, I did. We like the walled garden, because despite being a walled garden, it is still 10 times more pleasant to work with than the slack-jawed harlot that is Android.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
As a customer, choice is good.
As a consumer, some choice is good. Lots of choice is bad.
You know why Apple is winning the tablet and phone market? Here's a hint:
Um, what?
Here's a hint for you. For every iPhone sold, two Android devices are sold.
Tablet sales? iPad is outselling Android tablets. One would hope so, given how new Android tablets are, and given ICS, the first real tablet release of Android literally just came out.
But can you honestly expect such a closed, limited proprietary OS to compete long-term against one that's open source, free, and available to tens or hundreds of manufacturers?
If apple doesn't change their policies on IOS, it will be relegated to the same space as OSX - a nieche market for consumers with lots of money, and very specific tasks.
Don't get me wrong; I hope Apple opens up, if for no other reason than the market needs healthy competition. But to say Apple is winning the battle is laughable.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Don't forget to add the $9 Billion ($12Billion - $3B in cash) that Google paid for the money-losing Motorola Mobility just for patent protection for Android.
$9 billion is two years worth of net income for Google.
Hold home?
This is my experience as well. I always build the IOS version first, then port to Android and BB if the client explicitly requests it. It usually ends up costing twice as much for the ports, because it's Java and while Eclipse is quite excellent, it's no XCode. What XCode lacks in stability, it more than makes up for in convenience. And Blackberry, well as far as I'm concerned, they don't even have a valid IDE. The Eclipse plugin is horribly broken and platform-dependent. The JDE is stuck in the 90's and is actually worse than plain old Notepad.
Now, if Android could get their shit together and release something XCode-like, or even a Visual Studio plugin, that could cut my development time in half, and result in more Android apps being released in tandem with thier IOS progenitors.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Apple is loosing market share because increase competition. Apples iPhone had a 2 year head start over the other phones. That was 2 years of being the only player in the game. Then the competition came out. Naturally people will buy the other devices.
That is a bit of revisionist history. Android was initially launched Sept 2008. At the time of the iPhone launch, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and Symbian phones existed (and still exist somewhat today). iPhone wasn't the first smart phone or first consumer smart phone. IMHO, the iPhone was one of the first to be designed for consumers as opposed to being a business one slightly modified for consumers.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
If that's true, why can I buy 100,000 battery cradles, camera add ons, cases, credit card readers, sushi makers and personal massager extensions for my iphone but there are barely any Android specific accessories besides a few cases and some carrier marketed dash/desk mounts.
Because iPhone users have more disposable income?
As the saying goes, only the rich can afford to buy cheap things.
I'd rather buy something nice that will last, than keep buying cheap crap that breaks and fails and makes my pressure rise every time I look at it. Just the few hours I've wasted fussing with my wife's Android have exceeded the small difference in sticker price vs my iPhone. You can buy more gadgets, but you can't buy time.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I think for examples of bizarro tripe you might want to consider a mirror. I don't think anyone is saying its best for the company to go out of business I just don't think that the argument that "the company I bought from maybe more profit on my purchase than yours" is a rather odd argument to make in favor of said company. That's not a metric on which you would judge any other company at least I have never heard someone use this argument in any other case. Only on TV and in those cases making fun of the people involved have I seen someone brag about how much they over spent on an item. Now suddenly the idea that we are all aware that Apple is charging us more for their phones than anyone else and this is a good thing is out there and I think it's pretty much antithetical to most capitalist theories. As for Apple being THE premium maker I don't think that holds well either. Your argument seems to be predicated on the idea that Android phones are cheap and iPhones are not. But the 3GS is on sale everywhere for 1 cent and there are $200+ Android phones that sell out on release. So it seems that there is more to it than simple price comparison.
There are a lot of processors faster than Apple's, but most would smoke the battery in a few minutes. It is no longer about speed, but rather about efficiency.
Agree with the parent as benchmarks are relatively useless if the design is good. On the flip side, it took them 4 CPU Cores and a few years to catch up to the A5? Seriously....
Tegra 3, an unreleased chip that you won't be able to actually get in a shipping product for several months at least
Hm, the calendar on my computer must be broken, since December 19th is at least several months away.
Dude, you can't even see through your Apple bashing reflex.
I'm an app developer. I work with all four major platforms: IOS, Android, Blackberry and Win7. Hands-down, IOS wins. Better device, better OS, better dev tools, better sales, better everything. Any time a client asks for an app, they want it for the iPhone, and I usually have to cross-sell them on the other platforms, or their customers complain about not supporting their preferred platform. There is a reason why IOS is on top, despite the lack of 3rd party manufacturers and distributors.
It is the best goddamned phone out there for the great majority of people. Yes, it's a walled garden. Yes, it's dumbed down. Those are good things. It's a fucking phone that plays Angry Birds: that's what people want! If you offer some random person the choice between a free iPhone, or a free Android, they will pick the iPhone unless they're some attention-starved Apple hater.
The "Apple phenomenon", as you so disdainfully call it, is simply people willing to pay a little more for a better product. It works, it's well-designed, it has lots of compatible accessories, it has real in-person after-sales support. These features are worth money to a lot of people. Not all of us have the time or desire to mess with our gadgets, a lot of us just want to get it, use it, and get on with our lives.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
As a developer you might want to keep up. Most apps that work on my Android Honeycomb tablet also work on my Samsung Moment which is two years ago running Android 1.6. This fracturing exists but is not nearly as prevalent as portrayed. I wonder why when I install Market apps on my tablet it looks the same as on my phone? hmmm.... compare that to the iPad experience and you end up making a separate iPad version of your app. I've dealt with this for some time since my mobile app is basically a product catalog with ways to find said product at our event which is pretty sizable.
I have also not encountered an Android phone that did not support flash or h.264 acceleration. People putting up with the lack of flash on iOS continue to amaze me. The same goes for Java. As a result I had full SSL VPN capability on my Android phone pretty much from the beginning while the feature is still lacking on iOS, at least from a Sonicwall perspective because NetXtender is a Java based product.
All of that on top of the fact that most new Android devices support uPNP for streaming to tvs and receivers negating the need for proprietary iDevice docks. You see all the accessories as a good thing which I find strange.
There have been more Java developers than Objective-C developers since the 1990s. However platforms are more than just languages, and there have always been more iOS developers than Android developers, and there still is. And mobile apps still usually come to iOS first, and often don't get released on Android at all.
Why? Mainly because more iOS apps are sold than Android apps, so there's ore money to be made.
But also because iOS is a lot less hassle to develop for - it doesn't have the fragmentation problem of Android. With iOS there one single track of OS software releases. And there's one phone and one tablet released about every year to 18 months. With Android there's new devices and OS variants that might break your apps every week.
I agree its not about the spec numbers but tablets are SLOW right now. I'd say performance is a BIG part of user experience at this point and will continue to be as long as there is still delay while simply navigating the interface.
No where did I say they didn't make good systems. They make excellent systems, but other people make excellent systems for less money. I do hate Apple because of their end goal to manipulate people in to allowing them to control the tech and content industries so they can introduce an "Apple Tax" on everything, but my evaluation of their hardware is purely on technical merits. The iPhone is a solid hardware platform, but it is no better than many other platforms that are produced more cheaply. I also find fault with the software that drives it purely for the mentality that pervades Apple's design (read as business) philosophy. As can be seen by the changing direction of the market, even the majority of the consumer base is coming around to that realization.
AJ Henderson
Microsoft got ahead by being cheaper and generally more widely known (better and more widely marketed) despite being inferior... They stay there via inertia and lock-in..
Google are much the same, many people consider android to be a cheaper alternative to iOS, but its available on more devices, from more places, on more networks and promoted by more companies.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
>1) They had a good year lead in entering the market
They weren't the first to enter the market. Others entered years before.
Because with each new generation of iOS Apple makes the iOS run like sh*t on older platforms because they design the new OS to run better on faster hardware. Have an older generation of iPhone, iPod or iPad and iOS 5 performs like a dog. I have never known my iPod to stutter and hesitate until I updated to iOS 5. This is in stark comparison with OS X which traditionally improved performance on older generations with each generation (until Lion which broke everything equally) Agreed, Apple doesn't care about making the fastest hardware, on any platform, but they make damn sure you will want to upgrade your iDevice with each new iOS update.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
But how long will it stay that way?
Years ago, the big proprietary server vendors made the lions share of the server market with their highend risc systems, while intel sold many more lowend cpus at a much lower margin...
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Perhaps I should have expanded on what I meant by "Apple Phenomena" better. What I am referring to is the mass market, keeping up with the joneses, easily manipulated social consumer mentality that has pervaded first world culture. The entire notion of marketing a device in such a way as to make it a status symbol rather than a functional device leads to people overspending because of how our culture has been programmed to respond to marketing and spend. Apple is one of the most successful companies at capitalizing on this culture. So I did not intend it to be something specific to Apple, but certainly it can be observed the most directly in the way Apple does business and they are certainly the most successful at it.
AJ Henderson
Also, before someone jumps on me for saying that Apple's devices are not "functional devices" all I meant is that the mass market does not choose an item based on their needs but rather based on what is "cool". They are not purchased for their functional capability (which are solid), but rather simply because it is the "in" thing.
AJ Henderson
Exactly. Apple has (had, now that jobs is gone???) a vision and a great product lineup that all interoperates with each other seamlessly. But, the whole walled garden concept does make me pause now and then. None the less, the standard has been raised. Quality, features, and ease-of-use sells time and time again. Even if you don't like Apple as a company, they did plant the seed of success for other companies to emulate. The outcome of this can only be a good thing. Though I'm till waiting for a quality Android pad with exception design and build quality to hit the market. It's only a matter of time.
Life is not for the lazy.
What is irrelevant, from a user perspective, is the amount of profit that a company makes.
Try telling that to the early purchasers of a HP TouchPad or a Microsoft Kin who found out within a few weeks that the product was discontinued due to a lack of sales. No software updates or app support for them.
Now you seem to be assuming that making the most money is a result of overcharging the most. If it was that easy every company would do it. No, the reason for making the most money is economies of scale on making a single, very popular, product line.
Now they're going to learn another lesson: 3) don't get in bed with Microsoft.
I can order one hey? I can walk to the nearest Apple store and have an iPad 2 with an apparently similar performing (but with way better graphics) processor inside of 20 minutes.
So what "non proprietary" docking solution can you use to hook up your Android phone to the gym's equipment to record workouts and to view video? Where can I find a docking solution to integrate the media on Android phone to a home entertainment system -- and no, using HDMI does not allow me to navigate my phone's media library from across the room.
for user experience read as "we cater for people that are likely to be frightened by a mouse that has two buttons on it."
seriously though, forget about the fact that apple are about as evil a technology firm as you could hope to find, they are really not at all geeky. why do you fucking idiots come to slashdot?
I'd mod you down to oblivion if I had any mod points.
Then let's us hope that you never get mod points. Moderation is not for hammering posts because you disagree with them.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
on an android device, home takes you to home-screen, duh. ics /honeycomb running apps button takes shows you what state you left them in.
on ios you can code so that it doesn't go to the same state "exactly as you left it" so what's the point. on android as well, the coder can choose what happens when the app gets focus again..
ios is like a fucking dos launcher. it's copying features from android for a reason(slide down drawer..).
who douchebags voted the parent +5? did they ever press home button on android device, _any_ android device?
do they think that android devices ship with 1 global button that only works as back? (hc / ics is with onscreen buttons, but that's just cost cutting simplification).
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57321157-264/adobe-abandons-flash-plug-in-for-mobile-devices-report/
No, you make one app with resources for both. Developers choose to separate apps.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1288
Strangely that doesn't seem like a solution for my car or gym equipment,,,,,
I also develop for Android, iOS and I developed for WinMo 6.5 back in the day. I have to disagree on your assessment. XCode is a joke, the platform may be ok if you really get in to it, but it requires an entirely different way of thinking from any other development platforms I've worked with and the iOS market is borderline thievery for the majority of developers working on paid apps. Windows Mobile 6.5 was actually the easiest of the platforms to develop on from my experience thanks to the abstracted support for .Net and Android is more in line with conventional development patterns. The iPhone doesn't have better sales (unless your particular app requires customization to each individual screen size, in which case I could see a justification for breaking the market down by handset rather than platform) compared to Android. Yes clients ask for things in iOS, but that is due to Apple's brilliant marketing to make iPhone a cultural buzz word.
As you pointed out, people want a phone that plays angry birds. The entire argument about wether iPhone is better or not is irrelevant since multiple available hardware platforms would perfectly fit people's needs and in effectivly the same way. The only difference is marketing and the public image marketing creates. That is what I meant by the "Apple Phenomenon." It is the fact they managed to get people to buy on "cool" rather than buy on need or usefulness. In effect, this means people spend more than they need to in order to get ahead of the joneses and that results in a) more profit for Apple, b)less money in middle class hands and c) in many cases, as a whole pattern throughout society (and the fact that Apple isn't the only one using it, they are just the best at it) over spending and debt.
AJ Henderson
Write your app for iOS. And sell it for $100 if you want. I don't care, because I won't buy it. I am sure that there are free alternatives that are just as good anyway.
And this lack of willingess of Android users to buy apps is the reason why most app developers make iOS their primary or only mobile OS target.
And the idea that free apps tend to be just as good as paid for apps just isn't born out by reality. There are categories of apps where they can be free because a developer earns their money via a different model. But one way or another dedicated developers and designers need to put a roof over their head, and that means making money. People who do it "just for fun" or "to scratch their own itch" stop developing and supporting as soon as the fun wears off or the itch has been scratched.
Yes, I read "available in volume" as available to volume customers. The iPad 2 was released in the US more like 9 months ago though, so the relative timelines still hold. It's still kind of a disappointing showing from nVidia, particularly on the graphics side.
You seem to be confused about Google's business model. It's not irrelevant to them if 200 companies can outsell the iPhone - that's a hell of a lot of phone users looking at Google ads.
Not all Androids have Google as their default search engine. Yet all iPhones have Google as their default search engine. So how is Google winning by people buying Android rather than iPhone?
This isn't even exciting anyway:
This just in! New hardware faster than existing hardware! Read all about it!
Great Android selling phones do about 10% of a single iPhone model.
Not true. Samsung Galaxy S Sales Hit 30 Million. The last HTC Wildfire sales figure I saw was 21.3 million. By your logic, that means Apple must have shipped in the range of 200-300 million of each iPhone model, right? But total sales of every iPhone model sold from 2007-2010 is only 73 million. Even Total sales figures per fiscal year is clearly nowhere near that level. (I couldn't find iPhone sales figures broken down by model, but total sales of every iPhone from 2007-2010 is only sold 73 million, so clearly not outselling popular Android phones by 1000%).
Moores Law continues to confuse and amaze! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law
I get what you are saying here. Seamless integration is definitely something all people, both technical and non-technical, want. I wouldn't necessarily say that Apple is the most successful at doing so though, at least as far as pushing forward the state of the art. This is where the goals of technical and non-technical diverge. Apple's design philosophy has always been to develop walled garden, monolithic, uniform systems with no room for departure from a very specific and well defined usage pattern. As such, they are able to make some of the most easily integrating systems, but the technical challenges are basically non-existent in this case as the developer controls all variables. Microsoft is truely far better at ease of use than Apple ever dreamed of being. While it has it's own issues, the fact is that you can sit down to just about any x86 or x64 system in the world and manage to install a version of Windows on it and get passable results. The same can not remotely be said for OSX or even Linux (though Linux is continuously making progress in that department.) Android and iOS fall in to a similar boat, though Android still being fairly young does not deal with platform changes as smoothly as Windows does, but given time I suspect it will.
Even in Apple's walled garden, they still have some major interoperability fails as well. I have an AppleTV and had it decide to dump 3/4 of my video library when it sync'd with my computer causing me to lose a vast amount of video. Luckily I was able to get Apple to let me redownload it, but I have not used my AppleTV since as it isn't worth risking losing my entire library of media over. (And now I can use the (in my view) far superior Amazon marketplace and stream directly to my TV or any computer.)
Obviously the end game goal is a system that provides Apple's walled garden like usability on an open and diverse platform giving an ideal combination of usability and adaptability to meet the needs of the individual, but we aren't there yet so we have two different camps. One is pursuing the goal while the other is happy to sit stagnant and collect a big pay check. Largely the benefit off the efforts of others, cherry picking the best trends in technology and incorporating them in to their products, but very few ideas are truly unique to Apple. Where Apple is of benefit to the industry is in marketing and increasing interest in technology. Apple always has been and probably always will be the true king of marketing for the tech sector. The risk becomes when they are so successful that it risks blotting out companies that make actual progress towards the ideal end goal, and instead resulting in a tightly controlled industry driven around profit rather than technical advancement in all directions. (Yes some progress would still be made in what ever direction Apple deemed to be the "correct" (read as most profitable) way.)
Having been a long time user of PDAs and smartphones, I really can't say that the bar has been raised by the iPhone in terms of quality (speaking purely technically). My Dell Axim v50 was an awesome PDA and worked beautifully. It was a solid build quality and powerful device. In comparison, the original iPhone was an incremental upgrade though it did update the form factor to be smaller in size, but this had always been a direction the designs were moving in. They were the first to an app store on mobile, but not the first to an app store in general, so that is a borrowed idea that was simply transposed in (again, not saying they don't deserve credit for being the first, but it wasn't purely their innovation.) Ease of use has similarly been a goal for every company, just about every company other than Apple is also looking to balance ease of use with pushing the technical envelope and lacks the vertical integration to do it all even if they wanted to do the same walled garden approach.
AJ Henderson
The back button is a design mistake. Having a dedicated back button does not fit all scenarios and leads to ambiguous choices the user can't resolve without having to tap it to see what happens or suboptimal app behavior. A good example is Android's camera camera roll switching which is/was (I haven't looked at ICS) fundamentally broken and not user friendly. Stepping back a bit and thinking about it, it's pretty clear the culprit is the back button and the UI flow that it forces.
Way to not read what I actually wrote on all of your points.
First, Adobe is dropping flash entirely due to pressure on developers leading web creation to html 5, this made sites like Youtube have to develop massive new infrastructure to support iDevices, infrastructure that was never necessary given the presence of Flash on Android.
Second, You are not forced to have separate iPhone/iPad apps but in most practical scenarios this is exactly what happens and you can see it plain as day in the App store. This is also the reason I've been forced to develop three versions of my mobile app. One version for Android, one for Iphone, and one for iPad. On the Android side it has always been easy to adapt screen sizes and has only gotten easier as it was built to do just that.
Third, I stated SSL VPN which you might notice is conspicuously missing from the Apple support link because most SSL VPN solutions are Java based. This would include Cisco's SSL VPN offerings.
Lastly, I have no trouble hooking my Android phone to my car or gym equipment, if you want to count control abilities then I'll concede integration is behind the curve except for the fact that everyone I see with an iPod/iPhone adapter in their cars still controls everything from the iDevice itself and not from the stereo since there is usually incredibly limited visual integration. Naturally an iPod will charge in my car as well while an iPhone will not.
Of course my car also has a USB port which I can plug my phone in and charge without issue, no special adapters or cables required. Bluetooth or audio cable to my stereo and away I go.
Popular opinion has already shown that people don't prefer iOS to Android
Cite?
See above commenter that said that Android (platform) has more instances out there than iOS at least in relation to smartphones. Given the perceived value and cost of each, the majority buy Android smartphones rather than iOS.
AJ Henderson
Also, as to why you should care if your carrier had to pay a higher subsidy. Where do you think the funds to pay for that come from? At the end of the day, an expense for the carrier is an expense for the customer. If the device is actually worth more, then it would be a smart buy to get the better and let other people subsidize your purchase through the carrier, but if it isn't then you are just jacking up your phone bill and everyone else's.
AJ Henderson
It doesn't matter if people know their phone runs Android or not. The fact is that people are buying more Android, therefore they prefer it. If they actually preferred iOS, they would specifically look for iOS devices. Most people don't simply go online and buy a phone blindly. They go in to a store, mess around with the phones and buy one they like. In the majority of cases, the phone is running Android rather than iOS.
AJ Henderson
I don't know. At my gym the workout equipment has no dock. No iPhone, or anything else. However, they do use FM transmission so that you can watch TV and get the sound in your MP3 player/smartphone. As long as it as a FM tuner, of course. FM, you known, that standard invented years ago.
As for home entertainment, my computer is plugged to my TV using a very long but standard HDMI cable. I can control the media from any half smart Wifi device which includes all Android and iOS devices. I chose VLC but I could have gone with many other solutions. No smartphone has near enough storage to hold more than 6-7 of my movies anyway, but it's easy to add terabytes of storage in my PC. Since everything I use is standard I can change any piece of the equation without having to rely on a single vendor. I am not locked at all.
The most useful connection remains the 3.5mm audio output since it's pretty much universal. No need for fancy dock just to get sound out of your device.
Youtube converted to H.264 before the first iPhones were introduced. It was available for the first AppleTV as well as feature phones and Android phones before Flash was available on mobile.
This is only because developers want to charge separately for the iPhone and the iPad.
So you really think you get better sound quality through the headphone jack than using the line-out pin that adapters use?
I'm talking about consumers, you are talking about developers. That is apples and oranges, though personally, from my experience with Android, I personally disagree. I would ask, have you designed any apps in Android and then tried to port them to iOS? The design pattern for Android and iOS is inherently incompatible so I would expect a port in either direction to be complicated and take longer than the original effort since you are trying to replicate functionality that is not done the same way. I will admit that I have not been working with iOS as long as you, but I find it extremely obtuse to develop on as it requires a completely different way of thinking about things. (Also, I hate xcode with a burning passion, but that's beside the point.)
I would hazard that a lot of people's experiences impact how they perceive starting development in mobile too. I came from a MSVC++, MSVC# background with lots of .Net and started mobile development on Windows Mobile. I found Android a far simpler transition to make where as I found the documentation for iOS completely unhelpful and the bastardized visual approach to some of the development that couldn't easily be replicated in code to be convoluted and confusing in xcode (not to mention major stability problems. It was crashing on me daily until I switched to Monotouch to avoid using it any more than necessary.
AJ Henderson
When I played with the first Transformer I started by opening the Excel clone and playing with that. I clicked on a cell, typed on the keyboard and hit enter. It didn't move to the next cell. Instead, it just made the text in the current cell have a second line of text in it. I tried tab (it just added a tab). I tried escape and it erased my text. The only way to move to the next cell was to lift my hand from the keyboard and touch the next cell. I know I shouldn't judge the tablet from just one app, but that horrid user interface experience made me pass on the thought of getting the Transformer 2. If they can't get something as simple as that right..... there's no way I want it. And it's not like it comes installed with a lot of applications, so the ones they do include should be at least decent.
Add to this the rampant number of applications that raid your contacts list and ship the information back to a central database, and Androids failure to create an isolation mode which gives either fake or no information to an application and you can assure that I won't ever trust an Android system with any personal info.
I have looked for the ability to do development on the Android (not for Android, I mean on Android) and I just haven't found much of anything. No compilers, no command prompt to even run compilers from, no IDE's, etc, etc. So, another failure there (iPad is even worse)
Finally, I've looked at the games for Android...... wow, there's really nothing out there. Why have a PS3 equivolent processor when all you have is Atari2600 games? They really need to work on getting some game companies on board. It's bad. Really really bad.
Touchwiz isn't too bad - it was actually an improvement for Honeycomb especially in terms of video playback (stock HC video player wouldn't scale up standard def content properly.) It's not the steaming turd of Blur or HTC's Senseless bloat. (Which has been responsible for at least one HTC device not receiving Gingerbread from HTC even though I believe it runs Cyanogenmod 7 very well.)
Samsung has at least given developers excellent phones to work with - minimal bootloader locking (signing checks and warnings that unsigned code is being run, but unsigned code is not forbidden unlike HTC or Moto devices), and Samsung has donated devices to a lot of developers (Galaxy S IIs to the porting team that did the original GalaxyS, and a whole ton of devices to Supercurio for audio/screen tuning.)
The worst of AT&T is how long they hold back Android updates. The international I9000 (Galaxy S) and the AT&T Captivate are so similar that all one needs to do to run I9000 firmware on a Captivate is to change the keylayout file. Despite this - the Cappy got Froyo AFTER the I9000 got Gingerbread, and the Cappy still doesn't have Gingerbread. Similarly, the I777 was released six months after its international sibling, the I9100, with only small hardware changes (most of which were already present in the SHW-M250* Korean Galaxy S IIs).
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Where?
There is nothing communist in my comments. Companies such as Samsung and HTC make a profit which we can consider normal in a competitive environment. They don't go bankrupt by the way. Good for them, their employees and their shareholders. But also good for the public, because the competition benefits everyone.
And yes, Apple is a greedy company, just like the wireless carriers (which in many countries, act like an oligopoly). Just because people are proud to buy from Apple doesn't mean they are any less greedy.
There is a general misunderstanding of the nature of the "battle". Mac OS is not a niche unless you go back to the 90s. Mac OS is a niche in the sense that my favorite restaurant too is a niche when compared to the big chain joints. It has a market, and a very profitable one at that, and a loyal userbase who pretty consistently rate Macs highly in product surveys. If this is a niche, then I wouldn't mind a piece of that action. What specific tasks? Browsing, email, games, spreadsheets, graphics, word processing, instant messaging, social networking?
The point here is that you, like anyone claiming that x company is winning, must first understand the game being played. McDonalds sell far more burgers than my favourite restaurant, but I'm yet to see queues under the golden arches. The restaurant is not trying to win by becoming a food assembly line; they make good money and are the kind of place that everyone I know who has eaten there would recommend. Ask yourself this - would any handset manufacturer turn down the opportunity to have a phone handset business comparable to the Mac market? To put it another way, do you want to have sex each day, with anything vaguely female, or one almighty fuck each week? Personally I choose the latter, do I suppose I'm losing a battle against my friction burned itchy-crotch friend.
Why is this modded up +5 insightful as if it was legitimate counterpoint?!? you can do the *EXACT* same with the "Home" button on Android..
Back button allows you to contextually and intuitively move backwards in applications (and in most cases allows to close the apps out)..
A feature that Apple is clearly *missing*.
Even if Microsoft had a 90% profit margin on the Kin it would still have been a failure. So yes, profit is irrelevant. If they managed to get a 50% market share without making a single profit, Kin would still be there.
But what is your point anyway? That Android will disappear just like the Kin and the TouchPad?
And about 1/3 of Apple's yearly income.
The first iPhone in 2007 had Safari that used Google as its default (only?) search engine. It remains the default now.
I fail to see how we have Android to thank for this happening.
LOL (liteally). Do you even realize the irony of what you just said? /.er? :D
How about you look up the psychological term "projection", my fellow
iOS and Apple products (=gadgets) and services (=software) are overpriced dumbed-down crippleware made by tortured slaves. Thatâ(TM)s a plain and simple fact.
The other fact, that many people are so dumb that it actually fits them, and have no conscience, doesn't make that any better at all.
I'm not saying that Android, Gnome 3 with Unity, Windows 8, etc, are not attempts at imitating that dumbed-down crippleware shit. And I'm not saying that, running behind instead of walking their own way, they don't by definition put themselves in the second place.
But that doesn't make Apple any better. The leader of shit is still the biggest shit. ^^
Now go and cry about how nobody loves you and your beloved tin god. And everyone else who is insecure enough to also feel attacked by the above can join right in.
Cause there are still a lot of smart and self-secure people (many of them reading this right now) who actually want to use their (mobile) computers as computers and not as gadgets, and don't give a fuck about colorful clickables and the latest e-penis for insecure wannabes that need a idol like a 13-year old teen.
Yes and you know what? We are fine with it. Why would I brag about the number of paid apps in the Android market if I am not going to buy any? I have yet to find a single app on any platform worth even $1 to me. So I don't feel like I am missing anything, really. It's like if you developed a browser or an SSH client for the PC. I am sorry, but I will stick with free alternatives.
Not sure it's just for patent protection (though that is an excellent reason why they'd want to do it), but all the settop boxes that they produce too? Having GoogleTV rolling out there should work well for them.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
To be fair its considered an iPod dock. And most cars today do blue tooth tethering to any phone for streaming music and other media. And my Dodge came with a Wall outlet charger so i can charge any device...
Even the iPhone4 8 GB costs more than a Samsung Galaxy S2 16 GB, so you're obviously full of shit.
I think 95% of people don't care or can audibly hear the difference.
If you want digital output then you have either HDMI or USB (many cars, TVs and all PCs can play MP3 files from mass storage devices).
Proprietary connectors suck. The added flexibility and the fact that it is universal is much more important than any possible added quality from a proprietary line-out port.
The comments in this thread are interesting, to say the least. All manner of Android fans reading all manner of things not said, and responding with FANBOY FURY.
Fun stuff!
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
That's a detail that interrupts the narrative! Stop that!
Huh? Apple updates iPhone longer than most manufacturers because they want you to buy a new phone? If Apple wanted more profit, they would stop updating their phones so that you are forced to buy a new one. Apple wants to keep customers happy and they can afford to give decent support for longer periods because they make so much profit. For other manufacturers, even if they wanted to provide better support, costs would make it less likely to do so. But to your original point, profits do matter. They matter indirectly; however, if all you care about is how little you paid for something, can you expect decent support if you paid little for it?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
That's specific to certain devices not all IOS 5 devices which is a shame because there isn't a reason why for example the Touch shouldn't have full gesture support. You need may likely need to jailbreak your device to get any sort of gestures working.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
God you are annoying Karlt1...
When you can say this device is better in these areas and the fanboys don't scream and link Cnet at you...
I really don't understand it either. I think Apple is clearly missing an extremely useful piece of functionality. Doesn't pressing the single button in iOS do different things in some situations, much like the back button in Android? The Home button in Android always does the same thing unless you've explicitly modded your phone to do other wise.
Apple is currently being outsold by almost 2:1 by Android phones.
Burger King is currently being outsold by almost 2:1 by fried burgers.
trying to show why this doesn't matter... Your metric "iPhone vs. ALL-OTHER-SMARTPHONES" is silly, and means nothing. Would it mean anything to you if I showed you how well any single particular individual Android phone was selling against every other phone on the market? No... only if every other phone was individually examined as well. "Android" is not a company. Apple isn't competing against Android. The metaphor is that Burger King isn't competing against fried burgers. They are competing against McDonald's and Wendy's and other manufacturers of similar product.
The Admin and the Engineer
On a phone vs. phone basis, Apple is winning.
Except for last quarter.
That is not going to turn out as you expect, because Nokia already tried that with pretty much all the American carriers. Which is why Nokia phones are almost unavailable in the US. They are still limping after showing AT&T their balls. AT&T has a nasty kick
Type "pre-order transformer prime" into your favorite search engine. I was able to place a pre-order on two of the first 4 sites I checked.
Release date is Dec. 19th btw.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
That it's the software that makes or breaks a platform. Who cares if your CPU can run circles around the A5. Apple's iOS is a superior implementation of a mobile operating system (IMHO). Take your Tegra and go find some software that won't make it look like an 8086.
Apple is currently being outsold by almost 2:1 by Android phones.
Burger King is currently being outsold by almost 2:1 by fried burgers.
Valid, perhaps, but lame. Observe:
Diesel is currently being outsold by almost 2:1 by normally aspirated engines.
If that's true, why can I buy 100,000 battery cradles, camera add ons, cases, credit card readers, sushi makers and personal massager extensions for my iphone but there are barely any Android specific accessories besides a few cases and some carrier marketed dash/desk mounts
This is one of my biggest gripes with Apple and their ethics.
So the dock connector does all this great stuff and lots of devices have them, yet Apple won't sell *anyone* license to make devices with the female end of the connector. This means that every fucking device in the future that supports mobile devices will have to support Apple's interface, and Everybody Else's interface, or choose one of the two. This pisses me off as a customer because in the past, somehow, many competing hardware manufacturers managed to coexist in just about every sector of the electronics market. You don't buy a TV that only works with Sony DVD players. You don't buy a tape deck that will only work with Denon amplifiers. You buy whatever you need and hook it up to whatever you have. THIS IS A GOOD MODEL.
Apple's working really fucking hard to try to lock everyone into their own hardware ecosystem through a combination of proprietary OS and proprietary connectors to eliminate customer choices in the marketplace. I'm not going to argue that it's a bad idea -- from their end, it's an *awesome* idea. But from my end, it fucking sucks because I won't ever again be able to buy Apple hardware even if I wanted it because I have no interest in being locked into Apple as my only hardware provider. And then we have people like you who cheer them on with their proprietary nature.
Currently Apple has a huge amount of inertia and is the only interface that's being supported, but that *will* slowly start to change. It will probably take 5-10 years (hell, it took 5-10 years before Apple's dock connector became so ubiquitous), but we *will* start seeing standard connectors on Android devices and they *will* eventually drive Apple's proprietary garbage to the 7-10% marketshare that Apple has traditionally occupied, and Apple customers can live there happily while the rest of us are offered actual choices.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Wow! That's amazing!!!!
Not only can iOS multitask now, but it can also switch between running apps?
Oh... wait... You say the Android OS did this years ago?
This site says different......
http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/12/01/transformer.prime.benches.show.tegra.3.too.slow/
If that's true, why can I buy 100,000 battery cradles, camera add ons, cases, credit card readers [...]
Battery Cradles? Maybe it's because Android phones usually have removable batteries? Camera Add-Ons? Because Apple made crappy cameras up until the iPhone 4S? Credit Card Readers? Here's one that's available for both.
By several months, you mean 18 days, right? Just clarifying...
Android is not a company. It's completely irrelevant if 200 companies combined can outsell one (1) company if that single company outsells each of them individually. Just because Motorola and Samsung makes Android phones doesn't mean they are BFFs. Every single Android phone maker competes with all the other Android vendors. Apple makes 52% of all the whole phone profits. All the other 200 phone maker have to share the remaining 48%.
Here's what most Apple fans fail to understand: most of the rest of us don't give a shit about *any* company. I don't care if Apple or Motorola or HTC or Samsung have the largest marketshare; all I care about is having choices. Apple's ecosystem gives you *no* choice -- if you want an iOS device, it comes from Apple. If you buy accessories, they will *only* work with Apple hardware. If you buy software, it will *only* work with Apple hardware. If at some point in the future you don't want Apple hardware, you're also throwing away all of the rest of your investments.
In the Android ecosystem, there are a multitude of choices in terms of manufacturer and price point. If I buy an HTC device now, when I'm later looking to upgrade I'm not locked into buying from HTC again, because my software will work on a Samsung phone. My accessories will work with any device that supports a USB interface. I'm not stuck with a single manufacturer to make use of all of my older stuff.
I'm willing to have some stuff that doesn't "just work" if it means I get more choices out of the deal -- the funny thing being that Apple does not and has never had stuff that always "just works," so I'm really not making much of a sacrifice there. Every consumer computing device ever has had at least a few bugs, and you learn to work around them (or, in the case of Apple fanbois, deny them).
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
No, you're just an AC posting strawman arguments.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
There are so many flaws in your statements that I hardly know where to start.
You are saying that the iTouch Apple G 3S Phone (careful how you hold it) edition is better because there aren't as many to choose from and there are more accessories... really? Why did you buy an Elantra? Should we all be driving the same car so that they can make more accessories? Hey wait... maybe Apple can make us an iCar right?
Sheep like you make me sick.
Android phones have different models, sure. But guess what? All of them (that I know of) charge via either mini or micro USB ports. Many have a standard memory expansion port. Many have a standard video output (HDMI). Many have standard audio output (3.5mm audio jack).
Guess what... I can go to Fry's, Amazon, Best Buy, or Wal Mart and buy anything I want to plug in to my phone. And I can buy a case. And I can charge it in my car.
I fail to see what I'm missing out on by buying a device that can do everything the iPhone does, and more. It also happens to be cheaper. It also happens to be faster.
They do that to sell more phones in the future, yes. If you had a bad experience with an iPhone, would you buy one again?
By keeping Apple from having the clout to dictate terms the way they did with the music industry.
It would be a lot easier to take *anything* you say seriously if your examples about how awful your experiences with Android hardware have been weren't such obviously huge exaggerations. And I'm not referring to only this post but every single one you've made in this thread that ends with a paragraph about how bad Android is.
If the iPhone and iOS are really as awesome as you claim then you shouldn't need to lie about the competition to make it sound better.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
lol, you drive an elantra.
Wow, someone points out that Apple makes more profit off of their customers and you just go off with a big flame that gets modded to +4. I guess making observations about people buying overpriced hardware -- which Apple has *always* been known for -- counts as blind hatred these days.
I've never, personally, denied that the iPhone is a good piece of hardware. My issues with Apple have never been with the build quality. But lots of other manufacturers make quality phones too. The thing is, nothing will ever change the fact that it's all just consumer electronics junk.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Personally I don't care about the number of burgers sold so I don't spend time discussing about it on the Internet.
Nobody is forcing you to consider the smartphone OS market share metric. Some people find it interesting and they have their reasons for it. But you can't say that it means nothing.
Also, I hope you don't add the market share of the 32GB iPhone and the 16GB iPhone. They are different products, so they compete against each other if I understand your argument.
I was just replying to your reflexive fanboi "several months" claim with the fact the release date of the Transformer, which has the chip in question, is Dec 19th; something that was pretty easy to find out.
As for graphics, while the iPad2 GPU is better in some respects, it's also not as good in others but I would personally opt for the higher res screen on the Prime.
So go grab your iPad2 and be happy with your victory in one gpl fill test over a system available in a couple weeks that happens to be thinner and lighter with more RAM, a sd card slot, a better camera, native hdmi ports, has a larger screen, a faster cpu and a very usable keyboard accessory that also boosts battery life by 80% or more; to each his/her own.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
I love these posts. "fussing with [insert someone's] Android" without specifying what Android device, what exactly the problem was. Devices from HTC are significantly more feature-packed-by-default than say, a Nexus device as the Nexus device is meant to showcase the flexibility of Android SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO DOWNLOAD APPS TO USE -- you don't have to)
I could also add that at least a handful of people complained about the upgrade process on the i4s, how icons went missing. Or how sometimes downloads gets stuck from the store, necessitating a reboot. Or how up until 2-3 months ago, you could only officially use 5 different text ringtones, which even dumbphones had it beat out. LOL
Or I could just simply say "a friend of mine had to fuss with her i*" or "she was disappointed how restrictive it is" and copy word-for-word your sentences, just replacing the word "Android".
I suppose this would be groundbreaking news if it had come out before when the iPad 2 came out. It is nice that there are faster processors coming out all of the time. I would hate for it to be as slow as the A5. I would have to start worrying about my nVidia stock or something. Good to see it is trading up today.!!!! Whoohoo.
If Apple's user experience was that much better, and specs didn't matter anymore, then why isn't Apple winning the phone race too?
The metric for Android 'winning' is based on the .. what is it, a hundred or so phones (?), at a variety of price ranges on a much broader range of carriers. Probably not the best metric to predict the success of Android tablets.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I'm glad apple is greedy. At least my stock will continue to fly up! People always seem to imbue corporations with human characteristics.
Samsung, HTC or any other company would love to make the same profits that Apple does. Most companies would but they can't currently.
Will some company down the road make even more soaring profits than Apple. Yep.
Right now they seem to have a formula that works is all and it is hard to emulate.
Hmmm if the company selling your phone isn't profitable I think that might be concerning. All manufacturer's need to be profitable otherwise they go the way of Atari or Amiga. Great gadgets, but no longer here.
Yep, as an investor, you can be proud of your move with Apple. You probably made a lot of money.
What I don't understand is consumers/fanboys which are proud of having an Apple product because they make a big profit. As if it improved the consumer experience.
Hmmm I think it has more to do with what was available and what people can afford.
When there is such giant slashing of prices and 2 for 1 deals, it just makes more sense to buy an android which can offer some parallel functionality to iOS.
Mostly it ends up being about personal economics and a host of other factors.
I don't think most people care which device the software they want is on. They just want their functionality and they need to do it at a price they can afford. Androids sell so well because the bulk of them are far more inexpensive than an iPhone and offer lots of power and cool features.
Most people just don't go wow I want an android cause most people don't know what that is or means. They are more wowed by what they can do with one for a cheaper price in general.
They have to be profitable but they don't have to be the most profitable out there. Most Android phone manufacturers are profitable and this is sufficient.
No, but it's a perfect metric to measure the success of Android phones.
If Apple made products that didnt work very well, we wouldnt really talk about them on slashdot.
I don't know about that. Microsoft makes products that don't work very well, and we talk about them all the time!
Not always. There are not always free alternatives to every piece of software. Nor does free always mean good.
Just like some free and great software on Android isn't available for iOS.
Separate platforms have some of the same software, some divergent but similar, and some completely different from the other platform.
Apple IS winning. No one except Fanbois is interested in combined market share of some random companies.
I'm sorry, but that's disingenuous. It makes for an interesting info-graphic, but the reason the overall numbers are important is that these phones need continual application support to thrive. If you use an iPhone, you want the numbers on that to be high so that application developers will make sure you get the latest apps and games. If you use Android... same story. Remember when Netflix was on iOS, but not on Android? What a booger. This has nothing to do with the profits of the manufacturers. Even though it's good to know Apple has an incentive to keep supporting these devices, not one person has ever bought an iPhone going "Wooo! Apple's making 50% profit on this!"
With that said, however, the Netflix example did illustrate one problem with Android's SPAM approach to gaining marketshare. Granted, this is an extreme example, but originally Netflix only ran on certain phones. (Note: I am unaware of this was universally fixed or not.) They cover such a broad range of phones that there are bound to be some phones that cannot run certain applications. I'm not talking about fragmentation necessarily, either, it could simply be obsolescence. If consumers lose faith that their Android device will run all the apps they'll be interested in, then Apple's simplified product line certainly has some extra appeal. Google really does need to make sure that they maintain some level of elegance to their platform.
Anyway, back on topic, don't cherry pick numbers to measure success. Its not a simple topic. There isn't one lone statistic that proves on platform is superior to the other. Frankly, you don't want that anyway. The competition is making your preferred phone better.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I suppose. I guess that depends on how you want to look at it. I mean, look what it took to eclipse Apple's premium product line.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
What premium product line?
I like apple products because they have served my technical needs.
I like apple because they make money for me by making profits.
They may or may not remain the way they are now... companies rise and fall.
Luckily for me Apple seem to be in a great position for the next 5-6 years before the next paradigm shift.
I think when people argue apple vs android it is kind of silly. Both are excellent products.
The main difference is that most companies are still figuring out how to make money on androids.
There is too much movement on the android market and too many companies doing too many things.
But perhaps some company or a few will really figure it out and get themselves lined up for solid revenue streams.
Until they do there will always be folks talking about Apple and profitability and the mad scramble among
android phone makers.
Apple fanboys are proud of their devices the way drivers of Porsche cars are about their cars.
I know plenty of Android Fanboys to and they are also proud of their higher end Android devices.
They are always showing me their cool stuff. And it is android phones are great devices.
I will still be buying an iPhone because it has the software I need to run and does things I want it to do for me.
Still you are right if the folks you are referring to are merely proud of apple only for the profits as if they do indeed equate it with improved consumer experience.
I don't know any such people,but I suppose they might exist.
Stick an Apple logo on dog poop and it would sell. Stick one on an Android machine and people see the dog poop. Film at 11.
Kind of like Darwins concept of survival of the fit (not the fittest as most people mistakenly think).
All companies making a profit can compete to some degree or other and this is great for consumers.
They are. They make the most profits and are single most successful vendor.
Apple may make the most profits, but they're no longer the single most successful vendor -- Samsung overtook Apple in the most recent quarter sales figures from Gartner. (And it wasn't even close -- 24 million units to 17 million units).
(This may be partly due to the delayed release of the 4S, though -- we'll see what Q4 looks like. But that's a big difference to turn around even with the increased 4S sales ...)
Shallow and Pedantic
Now lock it and put it away for a couple of hours. Now unlock it: quick, where does "Back" take you?
What you are saying is completely true, however it also completely misses the point and completely ignores actual usage.
I don't give a shit about what I was doing a couple hours ago; I care about what I was doing a couple seconds ago.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
I didn't say that they were proud of Apple only because of the profit. I said that they were proud of owning a device from a company making huge profits, without even having a financial interest in the company.
This is a tech site, not a financial one. Usually people discuss tech issue. Sometimes, that includes market share. It can be linux distros, browsers, desktop OS, http servers, server OS or smart phones. The only time someones brings up the argument that market share doesn't matter, it's all about profit, it's because he's talking about Apple. But that must be a pure coincidence ;-)
They sell products people want, so they charge a premium for premium products.
The problem is that once the competitor product becomes good enough, people would much rather save their mullah. That's what happened with Windows in the 90s, and it's what's happening with Android right now. There are two major differences, though: one is that Android's not only good enough for the Joe Averages of the world, but it's also enticing the geeks because you can get under the hood and get your hands dirty. The other is that Windows was never, ever cool.
According to the latest Gartner figures, Android is outselling iOS on phones more than 3:1. That suggests to me that the "premium product, premium price" model isn't working so well right now ...
If you're broke or cheap, get the Android. If instead, you're the type of person who doesn't mind spending a little more for something better, get the iPhone. End of story. It's not a political debate, it's a value dilemma.
Your argument would work if there were no quality vendors selling Android phones, but instead they all came from dodgy startups that went bust in a few years. This isn't the case. Samsung alone is outselling Apple in smartphones.
Your original point again is that profits are irrelevant which you contradicted. Profits matter indirectly. Apple can afford two years of software updates and high levels of customer support because it was funded by the profits of the existing phones. This leads to more sales in the future. For other manufacturers, if they don't make much money on phones, can they afford much support? They will provide the minimum. As a consumer, if you want to pay as little as possible, be prepared to be supported as little as possible.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Which one is inferior depends on your personal tastes and opinions.
However I don't think anyone can deny that Apple uses at least as much lock-in as Microsoft and way more than Google.
Do you know what proprietary means? Both HDMI and USB are proprietary; they are just widely licensed connectors. Apple iOS connectors are proprietary and widely licensed as well. HDMI is licensed by a consortium; USB is licensed by a consortium as well. The only difference is that only Apple controls the license to their connector.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I'd rather buy something nice that will last
Out of curiosity, what is the longest period of time you have ever used an iPhone? I don't know about you, but the iPhone users I know typically "upgrade" to the latest model when it's released. I have yet to understand why, since iPhones will last.
Android phones are also the best performing phones out there.
[cite needed]
If Apple's user experience was that much better, and specs didn't matter anymore, then why isn't Apple winning the phone race too?
You're wondering why a single company with three basic phones (3GS, 4, 4S) doesn't outsell a dozen competitors with about a dozen models each? Yeah, I wonder why not. Of course if you're trying to instigate a "stats war", Apple does win when it comes to the bottom line [1] ... maybe it's better to have less model variations and more quality?
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/canaccordgenuity/2011/11/04/apple-takes-half-nokia-relegated/
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
It's called branding and customer service. People return to the place that has good service. When my original iPhone was getting long in the tooth after three years (and a couple of OS upgrades), I looked at Android phones, consistently found that they hardly ever got updates and usually not from the manufacturer of the phone, so I went with Apple again. When tablets started coming out, I didn't even look at Android options figuring it would be the same. Until some brand steps up to task and provides a supported product, it's too much work and uncertainty to go with android if you want that support.
I regularly get mod points. Mod points are there for hammering down incompetent flamebait like the GGP.
because Android tablets are priced roughly the same - or slightly less - than ipad prices. And while Apple fanboys are willing to pay that much for a tablet, most people aren't.
Even with that, android devices are starting to overtake ipads in terms of sales and market share. When the current crop of $400-$600+ android tablets are down to about $150 or so, that'll be the real tipping point and Apple ipads will become a small niche of 5-10% of price-doesn't-matter buyers like Macs are on the desktop
BTW, Apple's already lost the phone market. They're (probably) still leading for tablets. But not for long.
Gave it a day. It takes me back to my app as expected. In fact the previous apps button (or whatever they're calling that) shows me and takes me back to the apps I was using 3 days ago, in the state I left them. Checked task killer and they weren't backgrounded.
Double clicking on the home button is not intuitive. I would never have thought to try it, but a back button is pretty obvious. The gestures in a Pre weren't obvious, but the video that came up when you bought it taught them to you in under 5 minutes.
I still stack them up best to worse as:
WebOS
Android
iOS
Blackberry
Post anonymously - For when your opinion embarrasses even you!
a Quad+1 processor out-performs and dual core processor chip? who would have thunk it?
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Apple zealotry kicks ass. Even Microsoft topics never went on this long.
a5's performance is almost exactly the same as samsung chips.. I'm pretty sure the next ipad will have something that's almost like quad core exynos churned out from some samsung-chip fab.
but what ipads are, is that they're the c64 of tablets. androids are the same start of 80's era pc's.
if you bought a pc on the same day as c64 came out, chances are that the c64 did "everything the consumer wants better" and had loads of sw that "just worked". but it's already moving where on the pc side you can just have so much more.
and individual hits? galaxy s and galaxy s 2 are pretty big individual hits. they've sold loads, made loads of profit, brought samsungs smartphone arm back to business from the gutter it spent the last decade in. sony-e-soon-just-sony saved their smartphone side with android too and they're again relevant. and you know what? if you take an app made for galaxy it'll work just fine in xperia - the compatibility is _better_ than what it was with symbian or even j2me between manufacturers in the last decade.
biggest problem with ipads and iphones? having to use the fucking itunes.. I'd use the touch I can use more if I could just copy shit over without having to bother with itunes.
biggest problem right now is simply just that you need to target android 2.2 if you want the widest audience. but that's not too bad really(targeting just 2.3 over 2.2 doesn't make much sense api-wise.. and it doesn't actually mean that you couldn't bake in an ui that would look ok 3.1-> tablets).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Honeycomb does not have this behavior. It takes me back so I can take more pictures. Obviously I disagree about the back button being a bad design, but I certainly wouldn't be happy if I came across an app that overrode the default behavior of that button. Overriding the expected behavior of that button is not something I would put into one of my apps.
Post anonymously - For when your opinion embarrasses even you!
Didn't Jobs do exactly that when he paid for that liver transplant?
I believe the term is "more money than brains."
From my personal experience, geeks and fanboys upgrade when there is a new model. Average consumers upgrade after their contract expires. Some of them long after they could have gotten a new phone. I know some people with 3G that are due for an upgrade but the inertia of buying a new phone and transferring their stuff etc. stops them.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
... It's about user experience. And Apple's got that all wrapped up in a pretty little bow. ...
I have to agree that user experience is very important. However, I don't like the Apple kool-aide. My preferred user experience doesn't force me to use iTunes, or interact with the device in only the way Steve Jobs envisioned, or only with Apple hardware. I prefer my "bow" to be difference than the Apple approved one. So, Apple may "win" for you, but not for a lot of us and I think that number is growing.
Good idea! And while you're at it, cut off your head, too, because it's painfully apparent you're not using it for anything worthwhile.
ummmm....who cares? i'm no more interested in paying $1 to $10 for a crappy iOS app than I would be to pay it for a crappy Android applet. When it comes to the "marketplace" for both iOS and Android, Sturgeon's Law is a massive understatement.
Even aside from the quality of the apps, there's also the far more important issue of software licensing - I decided nearly two decades ago that i didn't want to be dependant on proprietary software on my desktop machines or on my servers, so WTF would I want to become dependant on proprietary software on my phone or tablet? Makes no sense to me
what matters to me is that iOS is completely closed. Apple gets to decide what's allowed to run on my phone/tablet, not me. Android, by contrast, is open. I can choose to run what the manufacturer supplies, or i can replace it with a community "distro" like cyanogenmod. I can choose to use the apps in the official marketplace, or i can use one of dozens of other markets - fdroid, for instance. or i can do both.
but mostly, there's a place for GNU style free software on Android. There isn't on iOS.
Android will have a thriving GPL and other FOSS developer community. iOS will have, at best, a fringe presence of FOSS developers. Nothing else really matters (to me, at least)
It doesn't matter if people know their phone runs Android or not. The fact is that people are buying more Android, therefore they prefer it.
Or they like the colour of the case. Or the wallpaper the carrier put on it. Or the price. Or it's the one the salesman pushed them. I'm sorry but it's ridiculous to say that people who don't even know what Android is bought their phone because they like Android.
Even if Microsoft had a 90% profit margin on the Kin it would still have been a failure. So yes, profit is irrelevant.
Profit margin is not the same as profit.
But what is your point anyway? That Android will disappear just like the Kin and the TouchPad?
I wasn't pursuing any point in particular. Just pointing out the falsehood of your statement that it's irrelevant from a user's perspective how much profit a company makes.
I have yet to find a single app on any platform worth even $1 to me.
The platform you use is Android. And that's a damning statement of the poor quality of apps on Android right there. I've found lots of apps worth paying for on iOS.
You lose, sucker.
No Contract iPhone 4 8GB $549
No Contract Galaxy SII 16GB $552.45
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iphone/iphone4
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-i9100-Unlocked-Smartphone-Touchscreen/dp/B004QTBQ2C
"No, but my Elantra came with an iPhone dock (as does about 70% of US automobiles.) "
So did 8-track tape (it was in EVERY car) back in the day.
And IMO, the dock doesn't make sense, radios change, I rather use Bluetooth or WiFi (integrated with NFC to turn things on and off !) to connect. Which is where the aftermarket is moving towards (even with iPods). These car options are gimmicks: it's typically a form-specific iPod touch/iPhone dock. How about allowing me to dock with... my iPad2, my iPod Nano, my non-touch ipod? Not gonna happen. I can't wait when Apple changes the design, and then we're back to the bumper case issue.
Sure the A6 will be out next year, but so will the next versions of the Qualcomm chipset and Samsung Exynos and Ti OMAP. All have their merits.
So please, take a breather, the TFA talks about tech specs, which is valid for a /. article. Take your "Apple >>> The World" attitude over to Gizmodo if you wish to ensue.
I've never found the iOS user experience as good as the reviews claim. It certainly isn't consistent like people pretend. Sure, neither is Android, but that's not the point here.
I think its one of those things that everyone kept telling themselves (because a large minority accepted it) and now its considered fact.
Maybe iOS is easier for a non-techie user than android, but its not so clear cut.
just being easier to use than android doesn't make it the perfect OS. The problem I have with iOS is its "one size fits all" policy where you get the default and that's all. It didn't fit me - and I had no option but to find a different device that worked for me.
There are still more non-apple people than apple people (ie. more people do not own an iPad for example than those who do), so that would seem to suggest that the marketing and blog hype does not paint the same picture as reality. The iPad may dominate the market, but its not a big market.
Yes, apple stuff is good, but I know a lot of people who are still interested in specs. And you just cannot assume that a device as inflexible as apple's is suitable for everyone. It isn't. It isn't even suitable for the majority of people.
iPads are only for people who want Apple stuff. Most (not all) people will either only buy apple or they will only buy non-apple. Very few people really care about the comparisons between them, except to rub it in to the opposition.
Otherwise, you're right - its irrelevant - but I'm making the argument from a different perspective.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
Really neither of the rabid/cultish groups are worth listening to.
Both Apple and Android have OSes that are pretty user friendly and both work equally well. Both pretty much do the same thing, and there is very little difference between them, since as soon as either side brings in an interesting new feature or app, the other adopts it.
Just find the phone for the best price and the features that you want. It's only a damn phone, there will be a better one out in a month anyway.
Apple's been good for the Music industry. Before Apple, the music industry had failed many times to sell music downloads. And Apple got to where there are in music sales by innovating and being the best.
Likewise Apple's been good for Google. As I said, iPhone has always used their search. And ships with clients for their maps and YouTube too. And as things were, as long as Google remained the highest quality suppliers, that wouldn't have changed. Heck, Apple was so solid in their relationship with Google they even had Google's CEO on their board of directors.
The truth is that Android was never intended to combat Apple. Development started way before the iPhone came out. And the then Blackberry like designs make it quite clear that RIM was Google's target, not Apple. But iPhone knocked RIM into irrelevance before Android got sucessful, and in order to be successful they had to change from copying RIMs designs to copying Apple's designs.
And now, as I said, All iPhones still use Google services, but not all Androids do. A massive own goal for Google.
I'm really happy for you that you care so much about the profits of the company you personally contributed to.
I'm sure the profits mean a lot to Apple, and Apple fans should be happy that their favourite company wont go out of business but other than that their profits mean absolutely zilch to consumers.
If it was the other way round, you people would be claiming that Apple is winning on numbers...I'm just amazed at how many of you still have your head in the sand.
Android is winning over iOS. No one cares if Apple makes more money than Google, except for Apple and Google.
But everyone has their preference, and no one is suggesting you should change yours.
If apple stuff works for you, just use it - dont worry about which one has more sales / profits / hype.
You should be thankful that the competition is forcing Apple to improve their products and discount prices.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
If you buy a phone for the updates, instead of what it can do *now*, then you're an idiot.
Its what the updates are for that is important, and I haven't seen much to be excited about in iOS updates. Most of the hot new stuff requires newer hardware anyway.
My wife didn't notice the difference in her phone going from 3.x to 4.x. It used to crash a bit before - and I suppose it does a bit less now...big deal.
Android updates are much the same, except the newer versions are adding major features to most phones. Still, the same argument applies - to joe average the new features may be useless.
Buy a phone for what it does already, not for some imaginary update you dont even know about yet.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
ummmm....who cares? i'm no more interested in paying $1 to $10 for a crappy iOS app than I would be to pay it for a crappy Android applet.
I'm not interested in paying for shit either. I look at the reviews and videos and just buy the decent stuff. But it goes further than that. I'm not interested in using shit even if it's free. And a hell of a lot more free stuff is shit than commercial stuff. Desktop Linux for example is one of the biggest piles of shit there is. You're more than welcome to it.
You kind of mentioned you were web developers.
That puts you right in the middle of Apple's demographic.
I'm a developer too (not web) and I can tell you I wasn't happy with xcode - it crashed several times the first time I used it.
And I'll code in java anyday over objective c. I know C/C++, python, perl, BASIC and java (in no particular order) and looking at objective C was so unnatural I decided to stick with what I know and leave it for apple nuts. Trying to develop for iOS without xcode is impossible, and xcode just didn't agree with me.
I like choices. choices are good. Isn't it a wonderful world that we are all different. Except apple people - they are all the same. A minority, thankfully, but all exactly the same.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
NVIDIA's Forthcoming Tegra 3 Outruns Apple's Year Old A5 In First Benchmarks. Technology Continues To Advance
There, I fixed it for you.
The A5 turned up in a production device almost a year ago (March 2011 in the iPad2).
After slipping from August 2011 to October 2011 to an official release of November 9th 2011 the Tegra 3 will finally appear in a device with a predicted launch date of December 7th.
I'm not an Apple fanboy - I'm typing this on a PC with a new nVidia graphics card in it. Still, comparing a mobile chipset that's not yet in production devices to one that was in production devices almost a year ago and getting sensational headlines about it besting the older chip in some tests? Unless it's significantly cheaper, I'd expect any new chipset to win in all tests if it turns up a year later - especially in a world where Apple's iPad3 is likely to up the ante in another three months.
In other news, the Tegra 3 is more powerful than an $8,860,000 1977 Cray 1 and bests it in every performance test.
So what you are saying is that people who expect manufacturer to support a phone more than the bare minimum are idiots? Do you expect that your TV burns out in a year? People who use Linux with their years and years of support: what morons! People who expect Microsoft to patch security holes years after they bought Windows are brain dead.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
*sigh*
Tegra 3 is faster than the A5? Whoopty-doo. You know why Apple is winning the tablet and phone market?
LOL, Apple is not winning the phone market, Android is.
As for the tablet market, they have a virtual monopoly that it will take one good Android release to break completely. This is why they are trying to get injunctions against Samsung in how many different countries, they are afraid the Samsung Galaxy Tab is that release the breaks them.
Do you know why Android is winning in the phone market, because people are sick of being told NO by Apple when they want to do something.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Perhaps I should have expanded on what I meant by "Apple Phenomena" better. What I am referring to is the mass market, keeping up with the joneses, easily manipulated social consumer mentality that has pervaded first world culture. The entire notion of marketing a device in such a way as to make it a status symbol rather than a functional device leads to people overspending because of how our culture has been programmed to respond to marketing and spend. Apple is one of the most successful companies at capitalizing on this culture. So I did not intend it to be something specific to Apple, but certainly it can be observed the most directly in the way Apple does business and they are certainly the most successful at it.
You're blinded by your snobbish desire to look down upon Apple users as mere sheep, idiots who aren't as smart as you because they chose something different than you did.
How do I know this? I pay minimal attention to how Apple actually markets things, so I know your complaints about how Apple presents itself to the world are bullshit. The original TV commercials for iPhone were just a hand, holding a phone against a dark background, showing how easy it was to do basic tasks on the phone (surf a website, send a mail, etc). Zero appeal to status, it was all about functionality. It continues to this very day with iPhone 4S commercials which consist of nothing but people using Siri. Yes, now that the camera frame includes more than just a hand, they're people dressed stylishly and so forth, but this is [i]not[/i] status symbol marketing first, functionality second. The focus of the commercials is [i]always[/i] "This is a great device, and here's why", showing off whatever Apple thinks is the most important signature function.
And then there's typical Droid commercials. These are almost invariably what you claim to hate about Apple. A recent one features a criminal stealing the new Droid Razr from a moving truck in a TOTALLY RAD action sequence. He then places it in a vice with razor sharp jaws and looks at it with awe. There is zero focus on functionality in that commercial. It is nothing but a naked appeal to testosterone and status. "Buy this and you will have the most bragworthy phone on the market."
You are a poster child for how people let prejudices taint their views of the world without even being aware of it.
Erm, no.
The back button allows me to quckly go back to what I was doing before. It's function when closing programs differs from the home button for some very good reasons. For Example, if I open a link from Mail to the browser, when I'm done reading I may want to go to my home screen, in which case I press home. If I want to go back to my mail, as I so frequently do I press the back button.
If anything, not having a back button is a design and user friendliness mistake.
Wrong, the back button does what it says it does, goes back. If you're going back to the home screen, it closes the program.
I'm beginning to think you've never used Android, if you think the function of the back button is the least bit ambiguous.
Your example lacks an example, you failed to mention what the back button does in this scenario. You're making an assumption with no evidence presented to back it up and expecting us to accept it prima facie. Once again, you're demonstrating you've never used Android here. In the camera application pressing back, closes the application (I.E. goes back to the application you were using before). In the Gallery application it takes you back to the previous folder, if you're in the root folder, it closes the application. Pretty damn consistent and predictable behaviour for a back button.
Stepping back and thinking about it, it's clear you dont have a point or a clue about how to use Android, the most obvious conclusion is that you've never used Android and are making this all up.
The back button does exactly what it says it does. There is no ambiguity here.
Whoever modded this up should be ashamed of themselves, but this thread has pretty much become an Apple love fest anyway.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
You've missed the point there by changing from *Brand A* is being outsold by *the entire rest of the market combined*, to *one combined subset of the market* is being outsold by *another combined subset of the market*.
There was a time when the Ford Taurus sold more units than the combined total of every other car in it's class *regardless of brand*. That's something to brag about. Seriously, that's impressive.
On the other hand, it's wouldn't have been very impressive for the rest of the car makers to shout about how the Ford Taurus was being outsold by the combined total of every car they all made.
Big news item: Bob's Burger Shack (a single-location store) outsells McDonalds nationwide.
Not a big news item: Nationwide, McDonalds outsells Bob's Burger Shack (a single store location).
Get the difference?
As a customer, choice is good.
As a consumer, some choice is good. Lots of choice is bad.
Nope, lack of choice is bad. Too much choice only separates the men from the boys and is never a bad thing.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Apple gear has its faults, but the few faults it does have are still better than having to put up wit a plastic piece of crap that will have no support or updates in 6 months. How many 'droids less than a year old are going to be able to upgrade to Android4?
Now the average Slashdot user thinks he can root the phone and fix any issue
Lower back pain?
No really, too much choice *is* a bad thing. And when I say too much choice, depends what it is, but more than two choices can be too much.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_choice
You can have a powerhouse in hardware specs .... but that means nothing if the OS is a piece of crap.
Android is that piece of crap of OS in the tablet market. With a never going to fixed sluggishness that is annoying to everybody except people with slow brains, the user experience of the OS is below standard. No amount of hardware will fix that.
best website for android apps
http://funnyphones.net/?p=509
Great for you. Even if my data was slightly wrong for your particular country, you still proved my point: the vastly superior Galaxy S2 isn't more expensive to buy than the old, slightly crippled iPhone4 of yesteryear, and you're a fraud and a shill. (.co.uk: Apple £429 vs Samsung £386, similar for .se and .no)
I couldn't agree more.
I use Linux almost everywhere including in my last 2 phones (Androids). Like everyone that uses a platform for a while I grew fond of some goodness present in it, which make me reluctant about migrating (say, to iphone/IOS). However, one mighty selling point of the IOS platform is the continuous stream of software updates.
Google still has this completely messed up. There is no Android phone I can buy which I know I'll have future software support for it. All the Nexus phones are normally only available in the USA and England. They reach the rest of the planet much later, and often NOT as "Google experience" devices. Meaning: "NO continuous stream of software updates". For instance, the XOOM was a Google experience device IN THE US, not in Europe (at least not in most of Europe, perhaps it was in England).
Another PITA of Android are the manufacturers additions to it. I would have already bought a Samsung Galaxy S2 if it wasn't for the fact that I simply don't trust Samsung to re-write Android's user interface.
' I think it's pretty telling that the "touch" event in the Android API is called "click" '
Not true, a quick look at the reference for the View class from which all UI elements derive in android(you can find it here: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/View.html) will tell you that there are two different events you can handle, onTouchEvent and onClickEvent. A touch event is what you would use if you want the raw touch event(for a game for example). The click event is what you use for things like buttons, or tabs, a more appropriate naming would possibly be 'onTapEvent', maybe. But I don't see anything wrong with onClickEvent personally.
Great for you. Even if my data was slightly wrong for your particular country, you still proved my point
No, I proved your point wrong.
the vastly superior Galaxy S2
You say it's superior. My friend has one, and it's a piece of shit. He uses it for a sat-nav for example, and it's forever misleading him on where to go. And sometimes it just hangs. And on occasions he's asked me to do something with it because h's driving, I've found that the UI is awful.
and you're a fraud and a shill.
Except for the fact that I'm right, and I gave the links to prove it. You're a bad loser, sonny.
Many (most?) Android browsers (including the latest stock android browser) show up as iPhone in these stats - not the most useful stats to be looking at...
(Android phones mimic the iOS user agent)
I can see what you're saying. Would it make you happier if I said people don't prefer iOS? I see it as a whole package deal where price of the device (and thus the platform) is a factor and people prefer the whole package Android provides for the reasons you mentioned. But it could simply be said that iOS does not give a preference.
AJ Henderson
fuck apple.
Actually, you are misunderstanding me. I would argue that the sex sells philosophy is less functional in the technology context. Gadgets have not traditionally be considered all that cool and have more a market of being nerdy and inaccessible. The marketing of the devices as a calm voice over with artsy music give a cultured feel while being calming and giving a sense of connection. It also appeals greatly to the artsy sub-culture which is considered much more a cool sub-culture. You capture their interest and it will spread more easily. Don't look at the surface of the videos but rather the results and how the adds try to get that result. I've been following Apple since the days of the early Mac and their entire design and marketing philosophy has never truly changed. Establish a niche market in the high end, increase the perceived coolness of the devices based on the users in that niche and try to get it to spread from there out to the broader audience that want to emulate the actual groups using the devices rather than the coolness of the device itself. You make an in crowd and get people to want to be part of the crowd regardless of the device. When is the last time you saw a Dell fan boy or a Motorola fan boy. Ask yourself what makes Apple have such a polarizing impact? The answer to that question is the genius of their marketing as a whole entity and effort.
AJ Henderson
Remember when was selling like hot cakes? Something doesn't have to be good to be popular, and sales say little about customer satisfaction. Apple also benefits from peer pressure, much like Levi jeans. People buy expensive cars even if they suck just because of the badge.
Sales really have very little to do with the relative merits of a product, and history is littered with superior designs that lost out to inferior ones. In this case though I'd say that isn't happening because Android outsells iOS in terms of devices shipped. Part of that is because Apple's prices mean they can't get a cut of the lucrative mid range and economical markets, and it turns out many people are happy to live with some less smooth scrolling or apps taking a second or two longer to load if it means they pay 50% of less of the premium version's cost.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Sorry, but your "no, Apple's single core 8 GB thing is actually three dollars and fifty two cents cheaper than Samsung's dual core 16 GB" does in fact prove that you're a shill and a liar when you claim Apple's profits are due to scale in manufacturing, not due to their much higher prices.
Actually, trying to disprove the proven correct statement that you're a shill and a liar with anecdotal evidence to disparage Apple's competitors simply adds to the evidence that you are, in fact, a shill and a liar. You should be ashamed of yourself.
there will be a better one out in a month anyway.
Except with the Apple phone you know it will be supported with significant OS updates for 2-3 years (At least as long as a subsidized phone contract lasts), and the better hardware wont come out for at least a year.
That said, everything else you mentioned is true, and if you don't mind a little work you can probably keep your Andriod handset running the latest and greatest. But the "little work" is what most of the general population has no interest in.
As an aside, I'm happy there is real competition in this space. Neither Apple nor Google will get lazy while they are both significant players.
That's not really Nokia's problem - their problem is that they never really seemed to figure out how to do swappable radio technologies like the other manufacturers did - and also, as i understand, usually "rolled their own" radio interfaces. This worked great for GSM because that was where their expertise was, but meant that they had major troubles getting any CDMA device to even pass basic carrier certifications.
So that meant they were locked out of around 50% of the North American market.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Apple is not a hardware company. Sure they may have contributed to the design of the A5, but it isn't like they make or design from the bottom up processing chips. They have used a host of different manufactures for different pieces, from Motorola, to Intel, etc... Pretty sure the A5 was an ARM build to order produced by some Fab.
If Apple really wants to, and can design for it, they can just start using nVIDIA chips. I am sure nVIDIA would be more than happy to sell licenses to Apple!
Its been mentioned before, that Apple is more about providing an experience or service using software, than it is about building physical objects (though sure they put a lot of design into the construction, its just that they don't actually build ALL the components...)
as I said I never found an app worth $1 for iOS either
That name somehow reminds me of Portal... Sigh.
I am not devoid of humor.
You really are a bad loser, aren't you sonny.
As you don't have an iOS device, it's doubtful that you ever seriously looked.
But there's a bigger thing here. It appears you use "the free alternatives" on Android, which means that you do use apps, but you don't consider them to be worth $1. One can only conclude that you don't value your time as worth much either.
Great companies are competing on great products, what's to lose for us consumers?
Does the average user on either platform care that much about upgrading the OS?
Anyone who's going to go to the effort of upgrading their phone is probably going to replace it before it is 2-3 years old anyway.
bad analogy. When did you last receive an update for your TV?
This isn't about phones burning out. Its about people being upset that their phone cannot do something that the next model can do, despite that it couldn't do it when they bought it and no expectation was given that it should.
Patching security holes is the only good reason for getting updates. but do you really think most users would care about that? most wouldn't even know what it was about.
Your username appears to be working for you :P
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
Really? Then why is Android winning? Maybe some specs matter? Apple thinks screen resolution matters. If not then why do they keep saying it's a retina display? So maybe some specs matter? Maybe battery life? Maybe the option of having a physical keyboard? Maybe having a screen large enough for a normal persons fingers? Maybe having a screen sized to use when standing? Maybe some people want to see the post-PC world. Can you do that on an iPad? Nope. Life is messy and real people with real jobs need keyboards. Apple could make them easily, but they won't. Steve didn't like buttons, so he sure as heck didn't want to add 40+ more of them to his tablet. So, ask yourself what specs do people care about? Because they do care about some of them. The ones they care the most about are which tablet has the best games and right now that is iPad, but not for long. Soon developers will be looking out at endless seas of entry level Kindle Fires and top end Nexus Primes and the tide will turn.
The iParty is ending, we have to get back to work.
bad analogy. When did you last receive an update for your TV?
The main problem I see is that you are only thinking about your situation and not realizing other people have different situations and have TVs that they can update.
This isn't about phones burning out. Its about people being upset that their phone cannot do something that the next model can do, despite that it couldn't do it when they bought it and no expectation was given that it should.
The only person I see that has any emotion here is you. Most people I know expect that a company supports their products after the sale. You call those people idiots. With Apple it is about 2 years worth of patches and sometimes new functionality. With Android the experience is not consistent with some models having great support and other models (sometimes from the same manufacturer) with almost no support.
Patching security holes is the only good reason for getting updates. but do you really think most users would care about that? most wouldn't even know what it was about.
Seriously, are you arguing that patching only matters if the end user knows the technical details of the bug and how it was fixed? Do you know the exact details of every patch applied to all your systems? Most users care that bugs are fixed; that's it.
In this case, you seem to try to twist their above average support of iOS users into a negative and then justify that with illogical reasoning. I suspect if Apple didn't provide that support, you would complain about it. There are many reasons to hate Apple; you don't have to make up new ones for no reason.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
You are right about XCode being a mess. It crashes a LOT and for seemingly random reasons, like for me it likes to crash on startup, but then I'll do exact same thing, open the same project, and it works perfectly fine the 2nd time.
That said, once you have it working, I find they did an OK job of it. Yeah, the weird semi-visual stuff with the IBOutlets and whatnot, that's friggin' messy, but I find I can work very quickly now that I'm used to it. I've only been doing mobile dev for, I dunno, 6 to 8 months, split between IOS/Android/Win7/BB, so maybe a third of that time has been in XCode. It's no Visual Studio, but it gets the job done satisfactorily for me.
Android, to me, is a clusterfuck because I'm nowhere near as experienced with Java as I am with C. I also find the platform to be quite fractured, and things that work great on my device, tend to have odd quirks elsewhere, sometimes even crashes I can't reproduce, but since all mobile platforms are so restrictive, there isn't a whole lot I can do to prevent these issues or even document them in a meaningful way. I've learned more from the Android Market's automatic crash reports than from 6 months of beta testing and experimentation...
-Billco, Fnarg.com
bad analogy. When did you last receive an update for your TV?
The main problem I see is that you are only thinking about your situation and not realizing other people have different situations and have TVs that they can update.
Nope. I dont even own a TV. I sure have never heard of anyone updating their TV. Maybe you should apply your comment to yourself? What would an update to a TV even do?
This isn't about phones burning out. Its about people being upset that their phone cannot do something that the next model can do, despite that it couldn't do it when they bought it and no expectation was given that it should.
The only person I see that has any emotion here is you. Most people I know expect that a company supports their products after the sale. You call those people idiots. With Apple it is about 2 years worth of patches and sometimes new functionality. With Android the experience is not consistent with some models having great support and other models (sometimes from the same manufacturer) with almost no support.
Most people are barely aware of what a smartphone is. They know of the iPhone, and probably that you can get these HTC or samsung phones that do similar things, but most of these people are coming from "dumb" phones and there is certainly no expectation of a company supporting the phone after the sale, besides warranty. Apple is good in this regard, but my point is that it should not be expected, since there is only 1 phone manufacturer out of at least 10 that does what you're claiming is "expected". My point is that most people do NOT expect support in the form of updates.
Patching security holes is the only good reason for getting updates. but do you really think most users would care about that? most wouldn't even know what it was about.
Seriously, are you arguing that patching only matters if the end user knows the technical details of the bug and how it was fixed? Do you know the exact details of every patch applied to all your systems? Most users care that bugs are fixed; that's it.
In this case, you seem to try to twist their above average support of iOS users into a negative and then justify that with illogical reasoning. I suspect if Apple didn't provide that support, you would complain about it. There are many reasons to hate Apple; you don't have to make up new ones for no reason.
Wow, you're really defensive. Where did I mention anything bad about iOS? I didn't even mention iOS!
Find me a non IT person who even knows what a security hole is. or even what a bug is. Seriously, my wife has an iPhone and she only updates it when I get around to doing it for her. Unless the updates are being pushed onto the phone (via iTunes or OTA), most people (a) wouldn't bother to check for updates and (b) wouldn't know what to do if there were updates.
Ask any non-iPhone user if they have checked for updates recently. At least half (probably more) will respond with "how do I do that?".
This is a stupid argument. If everyone was like you're saying, then everyone would have an iPhone. but they dont. not even close. They will choose it based on what their friends/family have or recommend. I know this because I see it all the time. And being the IT person in the family I'm normally the one who is asked. I normally recommend the iPhone if someone wants "simple" or Android if someone wants "features/flexibility". Its never about updates. If you like your phone as is, what would you want an update to do?
Everyone gets a new phone every 2 years anyway...so if you get an update sometime along the way that's just a bonus.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.