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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."
*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
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
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
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 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
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.
They need faster processors to deal with CarrierIQ's overhead on looking at everything you do and sending them every keystroke.
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?
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....
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.
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.
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.
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...
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?
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.
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.
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...
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.
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).
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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".
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'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
*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.
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.
I have the first Transformer, I'm very pleased with it.
Was it more than meets the eye?
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
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.
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
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.
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
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,,,,,
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
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.
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
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.
Even the iPhone4 8 GB costs more than a Samsung Galaxy S2 16 GB, so you're obviously full of shit.
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
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
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)
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.
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.