Slashdot Mirror
Google Rolls Out Official Android 4.0 ICS Update
dell623 writes "Google is rolling out an OTA upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich for the Nexus S. GSM versions can already be updated manually. An early review is largely positive and comments on the significant visual and performance improvements. The Nexus S upgrade allows for a direct comparison against Gingerbread on the same hardware, and the likely improvement in current phones that will receive the upgrade."
Despite improvements, ICS isn't quite as smooth and responsive as iOS was four years ago on the first iPhone, and it's really becoming quite an annoyance that Google hasn't yet solved this.
This is true, but I think it's interesting to look at it in context. Android phones usually have performance advantages over the current iPhone when it comes to things like loading web pages, but UI smoothness can be done on very little hardware if it's your OS design priority, and the iPhones have been designed with that in mind from the start. Looking even further in this direction, a single core first gen Windows Phone 7 has an even smoother UI than a much more powerful iPhone 4s - MS definitely focused on being iPhonelike this time around. That weaker hardware manifests itself in poorer computing performance, but the majority of what people do on their phones is swipe around different screens and run applications designed for the lowest common denominator hardware on its platform.
In my experience, OSX, Windows 7, and any flavor of Linux are somewhere between Android and iOS in their UI smoothness even when running on vastly more powerful hardware. Since we use those operating systems for content creation, though, we care about other types of responsiveness. I always disable smooth scrolling in a web browser, for instance, because it induces a slight delay. Scrolling is then jerky but instant. As mobile devices become more suited for content creation (and yes, I know that they're severely crippled for most non-consumption roles) I think we'll see users shift their priorities away from dropped UI frames and toward things like time to run a photo processing filter, which will largely favor the more powerful hardware.
That said, ICS looks pretty smooth to me.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Android has Exchange support. Honeycomb added full device encryption, and ICS carries it over. It's right in the changelist.
I'm kind of new here, and I always thought these kind of comments are a little bit tin-foil-hatty (see, I'm already learning /.ese!). However, I think I am learning of my own niativity, as it seems people really do spend their time (and possibly have a career out of?) spamming /.
I especially like how this particular post has the exact same time stamp as the article. Is there some kind of troll bot for this kind of thing? If so, where can I buy one? It would be nice to have something that can auto-troll the trollers. :)
Fanboy Status: Apache Flex, C#, Eclipse, KDE, Pirate Party, Ron Paul, Slackware, Windows 7
You're making an unfair comparison. The first iPhone wasn't even a smartphone in the sense that it wouldn't allow third party applications to be installed - of course its performance were guaranteed, when all the software it ran was perfectly calibrated to run on that specific device by its manufacturer. Install more recent iOS versions on older iDevices, or run applications intended for different screen sizes, and voila lags and sub-optimal adaptation.
I installed it on my Nexus S several hours ago. I prefer the pure Google experience and don't like to mess with other ROMS, and it was quite an easy install.
ICS is much better than GB. Smoother scrolling, more polished and true multitasking. Music stays running even when paused, and Navigation stays in the background much better... still exploring, but this is everything I wanted from my Nexus S.
At launch, no. A year later, yes. Having just upgraded my original first gen iphone, it did quite well with modern apps as long as you stayed away from games with 3D graphics.
The free market has a decidedly pro-Android bias. Android is now on more than half of smartphones - not because it's the only option but because people chose it, voting with their own money.
Maybe that's because it's better.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Windows is a great analogy in this case.
Windows beat Mac OS because it was more open and it created a giant ecosystem of companies creating cool products for it.
Android beat iOS because it was really, really more open and it created a giant ecosystem of companies creating cool products for it.
The great part is that Microsoft didn't learn from their past successes and they're following the Apple model in an attempt to beat back Android.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
People don't choose Windows. They take it because it's the only thing offered. Microsoft has worked very hard the last two decades to ensure that desktops aren't offered without Windows, and Windows is the only thing offered. In the most recent case, netbooks, they achieved this goal by killing the market for netbooks. Linux netbooks launched the category, and Windows 7 killed it. Microsoft has worked hard to prevent choice, and that's working against them now because people like to choose. It makes them enjoy the fantasy that they have some control over their course.
Now we're going mobile and Microsoft isn't coming with us because they forgot to let us pretend we get to choose.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I'm not sure your analogy works the way you stated it. The original MacOS died a well-deserved but slow death because it was closed, but not in that it was closed to software products: rather, because Windows was more open to hardware, while MacOS was restricted to Apple hardware. OSX is still tied to Apple hardware (the small Hackintosh community excepted), but its ecosystem has grown dramatically on the software side. Plus, Apple ships a developer kit and IDE with every copy of the OS (now available on the AppStore for free), which is a strong check on the openness side.
Microsoft's failure to gain a strong footing in the mobile arena against Apple and Android is more of a marketing failure than anything else. MS is haunted by the ghosts of CE and Zune, and they just don't have the consumer confidence that Apple has by the bushel. Android's relative success in the market is all the more remarkable for not having the marketing team that Apple enjoys. MS is going to have to learn how to sell themselves and differentiate themselves from the rest of the market with some nifty tricks if they're ever going to gain traction. Windows 8 and Metro are big parts of that strategy, and a lot is riding on the popular acceptance of Metro: if it tanks, so do MS's hopes of getting into the tablet/phone market big-time this decade.
That the market is different also points to a MS weakness: they grew partly because of openness to (and shady deals with) hardware vendors, but also because of the consequence of that hardware support: they were *the* business platform in the 90's. You had a PC at work, you had Word (or WordPerfect or Lotus AmiPro/WordPro) at work, you had grown used to thing being a certain way at work, so you got all that at home too. Phones and tablets are different, and Apple got the first-to-market advantage of being able to set the tone for what tablets and smartphones should feel like. Android hasn't beaten iOS yet, although they've certainly established themselves as a fierce competitor. MS is coming to the game without experience in the arena, with a corporate culture that's geared towards making business products (and failing on the domestic/personal side -- Works, Bob, etc.). The tablet and smartphone market isn't a business market; businesses use them on the side, but their main computing needs are still the laptop and desktop. MS may be overextending itself with respect to its own culture by trying to get into the mobile field.
In the end, it'll come down to consumer perceptions. MS has shown time and time again that its marketing team isn't up to the task of making a household name for itself: the place it held/holds in domestic computing was a side benefit of its dominance in the corporate world and a lack of competition. Apple's marketing has eroded that considerably, at least on the laptop side (How many MacBooks do you see in every coffee shop and classroom?), while not really even trying to dent the corporate market (OD/AD support is second-rate, as are many of the necessities of managing an enterprise installation base, and their office products like Pages are very much geared to the individual consumer rather than the corporate, although Keynote kicks everyone's ass). MS would be wise to refocus on the desktop market (it's not going away soon), try to recapture some of Apple's gains in the laptop market, and leave iOS and Android to duke it out over the market they already dominate. Oh, and fire their entire fucking marketing department twice over and then try to lure in some of Apple's UI designers.
I do wish people would allow this spam to stay unmodded for a little longer - the language is just so amusing.
Restore ancient ways in recent street snap of cloak was stars to deduce wantonly
has an inner poetry that is quite beguiling, even if some fool wants to sell a knock-off handbag on the back of it.
It's almost tempting to think that there is a very poorly made recursive transition network somewhere in China knocking this stuff out, but I fear it's just bad Chinglish.
I call B.S. on Windows being any useful comparison at all. That is a complete historical rewrite. When Windows won, there was no Windows and there was no Mac OS - in the same sense there is today. Windows won over Mac OS because Bill Gates is a marketing genius and Steve Jobs had not yet learned that skill. Steve Jobs was still a hippie, and Windows was DOS. At the time when the choice was being made, Neither Mac OS nor "Windows" (Which was little more than a vaporware App for DOS) was the best of breed. Best of breed at the time was the Commodore Amiga. 32 bit multi-tasking, 4096 colors, NTSC (PAL in Europe) video output, quadrophonic Sound (with stereo outputs), and real-time animation against DOS's 'beep' and 16 colors 'Ascii Art' and Mac OS's 64 shades of grey and monophonic MIDI 'sounds'. The best software of the day was being written for it. Electronic Arts was born and started selling games. Disney Animator begat "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", and "Max Headroom" (who was messed up on purpose to emphasize the fact that he was computer generated) and nobody had anything to compare with that. The business world did not really use these things yet. A few forward looking business gave them to secretaries, but there were Macintoshes and PC's both at this time. High end business (like law offices) tended to use Apple because it supported Postscript, and good looking printed output was possible, and low end businesses tended towards PC's running DOS because they were cheaper, and descent printed out was achieved with daisy wheel printers because laser printers needed Postscript, and DOS didn't support it (plus the laser printer cost more than the PC did). Bill Gates was able to manipulate the market to his advantage and nobody else saw it coming until it was too late. To his advantage was indeed an open hardware spec, but none of the companies involved at the time made anything to really compete with the Amiga. Adding peripherals to even try was very expensive, and nobody really tried very hard. Commodore lost by refusing to sell their machines through the toy stores for fear they would not be taken seriously where the Commodore 64 had a virtual lock on the market at the time (The Commodore 64 still holds the record for outselling any single model of computer ever), and insisting on SELLING their demo units to computer retailers, which were all independents at the time and refused to pay for them. So customers had a photograph of a better system in a corner of the store (Amiga), a better, but more expensive, piece of hardware with little software to take advantage of it (Apple), and cheaper hardware with little software to take advantage of it (DOS). "Windows" was useless at this point. There was also Atari, but they were somewhere between Apple and Commodore, and got squeezed out by being a bit too expensive with not quite enough hardware goodies to attract attention. If Commodore had had any marketing sense at all they could have killed everyone at this point, but they missed the boat. Then Apple kicked Steve Jobs out and replaced him with John Scully who made a complete mess of the company, and started losing market share faster than Nokia in the phone market. Steve finally woke up from his LSD infested dream and realized he screwed up. Steve Jobs created NeXT and wrote what is essentially the Mac OS of today, and got Apple back when it was almost completely bankrupt. By this time, Bill Gates had done some very underhanded, illegal, and anti-competitive things in the marketplace, mostly fixed Windows to look like a useful GUI OS, bought the components for Office (all of which were Mac based!), released Mac Office to generate interest in the business world that computers could actually be useful after all, and started porting Office to Windows. Steve Jobs came back to a marketplace John Scully had already lost. Microsoft owned the OS, and was able to write little bugs into Windows to break or slow down things like DR-DOS, Word Perfect, and Lotus 123... and add hooks to their advantage for Offic
People can choose desktops and laptops without Windows- they're called "Macs". Which was sort of the point of this thread. Like you, I lament that Linux boxes aren't widely available, and that Linux netbooks were killed in such a clinical fashion. But the lack of Linux boxes has nothing to do with Windows beating Apple, or Amiga, or Acorn, or anybody else...
Installed since 30 min. Playing around, it's unbelievably unresponsive and slow...
but finally in 2011 I can move emails across folders...
cheers
Android uses the same aproach since 3.0. See http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/graphics/hardware-accel.html#hardware-model , Hardware accelerated rendering model. CPU just makes display lists and pushes them to the GPU. Processor is not involved in the rendering once the display list are on the GPU (if the GPU supports it).