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An Early Look At Android M's Multi-Window Mode For Tablets
Ars Technica has a look at the experimental multi-window mode in the just-announced Android M. It's not a headlining feature yet: "buggy, busted, and buried, but intriguing nonetheless" is how Ars describes it. Android Police is similarly faint in its praise. All that might be true, but to many users even a partly working multi-window mode would be welcome, especially one blessed by Google. (Some Samsung users have had multi-window support for a while, but not built into the OS proper, and multi-window capabilities can be found via app, too.)
Obviously - given the amount of stuffing around and warnings you apparently get when enabling it - this feature is not meant to be used yet, but as far as it goes what is different to say Samsung's implementation? I've seen the Samsung one and it seems to work fine (in the limited cases I used it) so is there some differentiating feature here? Like APIs for apps to share resources or something? Aside from the vendor-specific aspect of Samsung's one of course.
Having also used multi-windowing on an x86 Surface (pretty sure the ARM ones had it too) with Windows 8.1 I think this is going to be a huge feature in terms of productivity for Android if they can standardize it on the platform, having the apps side-by-side when you are using multiple programs is so much better than having to switch between them.
Another dysfunctional window manager. On my tablet there are already multiple apps running.
Is it that hard to write a SMALL window manager that works? Looks like everyone writes one before they write a web browser.
The geniuses at Microsoft carefully followed the fashion to ensure that "Apps" are only single windowed, just like the so successful i*s. And now some ar*hole at Google is making them put it all back again. It is hard to be a non-thinking follower.
As for productivity... it's a tablet OS, it's consumptive, not productive.
The artificial distinction drawn between "consumptive" and "productive" user interfaces on a device that can theoretically support both is the problem. It acts as a barrier to participatory culture, as a lot of people don't have $400 to splurge on a "productive" device when they get the itch to do something "productive".
It's (normally) missing a keyboard
For someone who already bought a tablet computer or received one as a gift, a $50 Bluetooth keyboard is still less expensive than a $400 "productive computer".
(always missing) a mouse so you can actually copy and paste with some accuracy and speed
True, the text selection mechanism on Android through level L leaves something to be desired. But that's an argument for improving the text selection mechanism, not for continuing "consumptive" policies.
When I hold the home button I see the most recent windows and can jump to the one I wish to bring up. That's a simple window manager. If you want more it's not simple anymore.
My tablet's screen is twice as big as that of a phone. All I really miss is the ability to edit in one app while referring to information displayed through another app. Are you trying to claim that a simple side-by-side tiling window manager is "not simple anymore"? Heck, Windows 1 had that.
But how many apps support multi-window operation? Last time I checked the Android CDD, it allowed apps to assume that the screen size will never change after installation, other than by exchanging width and height. As far as I can tell, apps have to opt-in to Samsung's multi-window mode, and only developers of apps who regularly test on a larger Samsung Android device (Galaxy Note, Galaxy Tab) are likely to enable that.
Let me put it another way: Some people want to be able to work in one app while referring to information presented through another.
"When will Firefox OS be getting this functionality?"
They'll get tabs instead.
The geniuses at Microsoft carefully followed the fashion to ensure that "Apps" are only single windowed
How so? Windows 8's Windows Runtime environment introduced the "Snap an App" feature, which allows a 3:1 split of the horizontal space. Press Win+Period, and one Windows Runtime app fills 1/4 of the screen's width, roughly as wide as a cell phone's display, and the other 3/4 shows either the desktop or another Windows Runtime app. Windows 8.1 allowed changing the ratio, reminiscent of the tiling window manager that shipped with Windows 1.
Once you understand Snap an App, you'll realize that the most serious fault of Windows 8 was that the Start screen could not open snapped. A snapped Start screen would have been equivalent to the Start menu of previous Windows versions.
This is a porn-driven OS enhancement, right?
To a hipster, everything old is new, because they know nothing about the past.
I hear that, in the next radical upgrade, Android will add 'borders' to their apps and you'll be able to click on these 'windows' and move them around the screen and resize them, so you can control how much of each app you see, based on what you're doing at the time. It'll be so cool!
Because Android allows apps to run in the background (and I mean actually run, not register to be woken up by certain events as on iOS), we have that already. This will just let you interact with them all at once.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Because Android allows apps to run in the background (and I mean actually run, not register to be woken up by certain events as on iOS), we have that already. This will just let you interact with them all at once.
So finally I will have multiple apps in the foreground bringing my tablet to a crawl.
Jokes aside, have Google announced wich devices will get this, I'm wondering if my Nexus 7 and 4 will receive the official update.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
As far as I'm aware, they haven't, but it does look like it's a tablet-only feature, so your Nexus 4 is out, along with my Nexus 6. If I'm not mistaken, there are a couple different Nexus 7's, one of which is no longer supported. If you have the newer one, I'd imagine you're covered. I just hope I don't have to wait long for the hack to enable it on phones, given the 5.9" screen on my Nexus.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
What makes you think that ANY implementation regardless of who it's from, (Google, Samsung, etc), is going to work correctly if the assumption is: "My app always runs in full screen mode, and can completely trash the framebuffer without care."?
The real WTF is how this assumption survived in Android H through L. Google should have invalidated this assumption way back in Honeycomb, the first tablet-optimized version of Android.
So explain which use case does iOS not allow with its multitasking abilities?
reinvent the tiling wm?
No they are implementing the existing tiling window manager concept on Android, which doesn't currently have such a thing.
Defensive much? He didn't say there were any use cases. He did, however, accurately describe how iOS allows apps to gain background processing time.
He also said something that was patently untrue....
Hint: How would music, gps, VOiP, etc. apps work if they weren't constantly running in the background?
Servers. Yes, I run a development server on my Android phone.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Music apps pass the stream off to iOS to keep playing while they are suspended. iOS briefly wakes the app near the end of the stream in order to allow it to pass a new stream. iOS will wake an app using the GPS with location updates in order to allow the app to make notifications as required. VOIP and messaging apps are woken up when a message or call comes in. How all of this works is very well documented. Are you saying that what's described in Apple's own documentation is patently untrue?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
What is a "development server"?
That hasn't been my experience. I charge my Nexus 6 every other day while my wife's iPhone 6 Plus needs juice nightly, sometimes mid day. My wife's iPhone 4 and 5 both had similar battery life to her 6 Plus, maybe marginally better, while my HTC One X and One (7) and LG G3 all had similar battery life to my Nexus 6. I know I'm just one person, but that's a sample size of 7; not definitive, but certainly convincing.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
In my case, HTTP, PHP, and SMTP.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
There are two types of location aware apps for iOS. One type just asks the OS to notify it when the location changes. The other is constantly running and tracking location. For instance, something like Nike+ GPS is constantly running and tracking your location. You can actually tell which is which by the icon on the status bar - it will be either solid or outlined.
As far as sound, how could the stream just be "passed off to the OS" in the case of something like the OverCast that is constantly processing the sound to remove silence and doing other processing? Audio processing apps that support AudioBus also wouldn't be possible.
Another example is the WireCast app that can act as a remote camera even in the background.
That's wonderful. I don't care about lb tests or specs written on paper when my actual real-life experience says the opposite. All the manufacturer specs and controlled conditions testing in the world is not going to convince me that my wife's phone lasts longer than mine when it regularly dies before she charges it at night while mine routinely lasts 2 days. Likewise, I'm sure my anecdote won't convince you of anything, either; that's not why I was sharing it.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Oh, I'm listening, I'm just hearing a bunch of crap that doesn't agree with reality. You, on the other hand, seem to not be listening: even if the specs say the iPhone 6 Plus will last a week on a single charge ant the Nexus 6 will only last 5 minutes, that has no bearing on reality. The reality is that my phone, a Nexus 6, routinely lasts more than twie as long as my wife's phone, an iPhone 6 Plus. Specs and lab tests be damned.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
You realise battery life depends extremely heavily on installed apps, and how often they query the network in the background?
Seriously dude, your real world experiences are WRONG. Get your facts from the internet, not real life.
Joking aside, give up. The guy you're trying to argue with is utterly impervious to logic, facts or reason. I've tried arguing with him and he's utterly impenetrable.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Yes, but not nearly as heavily as screen-on time on a 6" class device. That said, I've got bittorrent sync running on my phone, on top of having it configured to update apps, mail, and calendars over any network, and the fact that I use the phone as a dash cam (bittorrent sync is transferring anywhere from 1 to 10GB of video per day from this activity alone). My phone sees considerably more use than hers, which gets used more as a dumbphone than anything else.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Yes, and entertaining. Just realize that you're not going to win against him and don't get worked up over it. By then, you've already won.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I didn't RTFA (hey, this is Slashdot) but I could see where recent tablet iterations have such high DPI that it might be most useful for multi-window mode to split the screen and scale the app windows to fit more than one app at a time on the screen.
It seems like a lot of apps have a kind of defined layout and not much if any layout intelligence built into them, so changing their window size to less than screen size would seem to require many apps to be rewritten to support other windows sizes than full screen.
Scaling the entire app display to fit the window size would seem to solve much of this, with the caveat that apps with a fine degree of detail in their controls and small text to begin with might be less than useful. But for many, monitoring the content changes might be enough even if 100% of the controls or detail isn't legible.
In other words "la la la. I'm not listening."
...to random statements on the Internet that conflict with observed reality.
That seems sensible to me.
Maybe you should run Windows?
There was a period of at least a year when makers of Windows laptops essentially ignored the 10-inch size class in favor of the higher-margin tablet segment. (See Does 2012 Mark the End of the Netbook?) This wasn't solved until ASUS brought out the Transformer Book.
Evidence was posted. So your your attitude is equally ignorant.
It's not surprising you don't understand anecdotes are not data.
No indeed you can't win with anecdotes of observances against specs and independent tests.
You're no better than a global warming denier who's seen snow in march.
There was command line user interface, then (multiple) windows user interface, then single screen user interface (android/IOS/windows phone), now going back to multiple windows user interface ..... next would be going back to command line interface. Cool.
Not quitel There is a lot more toglobal warming than whether or not it smows in March, but, tyere is nothing more to whether my phone or ky wife's phone lasts longer than whether my phone or mynwife's phone lasts longer. Mine, a Nexus 6, lasts longer than hers, an iPhone 6 Plus. Period. Therefore, it is correct for me to say that, in my experience, the Nexus 6 lasts longer than the iPhone 6 Plus. At no point did I claim that my observations were indicative of all Nexus 6 and iPhone 6 Plus devices; in fact, I was fairly explicit in stating that jy observations were just that: my personal observations of my last 5 Android phones compared to my wife's last 4 iPhones. I know what the specs say should happen, but I've never actually seen it outside of a lab.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Also, damn, this is why I don't post from my phone (I've turned off autocorrect or it might have been worse).
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
We're almost full circle back to laptops running windows... :-/
I'm surprised you haven't put two and two together. All your phones last longer than all your wifes phones. That's one of the two major trends your case shows, the other being that, coincidentally, all your phones were Android devices and hers were iphones. I'd be willing to wager real money that usage patterns are quite different (ie. she probably uses her phone more, or some feature of it that draws more battery power - maybe just checking it more often (screen use); maybe she keeps gps/wifi/bluetooth all on all the time and you don't; maybe it's apps or talk time; maybe just one game she plays a lot; etc).
FWIW, I've never owned, and do not plan to ever own, and iphone. My own usage patterns have GREATLY affected my own battery life. I picked up an addictive game a while back, and my battery life dropped from days down to about half a day. It doesn't even get much actual phone time, but when it does, it sucks down juice like crazy. If you want a better anecdotal experience, swap phones with her for a week (turning off all background apps the other used), and use similar stuff to what you used on the other phone.
My phone: all radios on. Her phone: all radios on. Aside from that, I discuss usage patterns elsewhere in the thread; mine certainly sees more use than hers. Unfortunately, since there is no possible way for me to run an SMTP server or an HTTP server with PHP support on an iPhone, swapping phones with her to test the impact of usage patterns is not a viable option; but the SMTP and HTTP servers I run on my phone for on-the-go development and testing are certainly battery hogs, I can't imagine the iPhone would fare any better running those.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Exactly. An anecdote that's not even of a proper side by side test, of two phones doing the same thing is completely useless.
And yet my phone, under higher usage than hers, lasts longer. If it were the other way around I'd see your point.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The scientific method is obviously alien to you.
So you're positing that putting a higher load on her phone and a lower load on mine would result in her phone outlasting mine? See, I understand the scientific method just fine, but I also have some basic common sense, which seems to be lost on you.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I can give you research and articles that said man never went to the moon. I also know people who went there. Guess which one I trust?
No indeed you can't win with anecdotes of observances against specs and independent tests.
You're no better than a global warming denier who's seen snow in march.
Because no tech company has EVER fudged on benchmarks!
In both specs and independent usage tests the iPhone 6 Plus outlasts the battery of the Nexus 6.
http://www.trustedreviews.com/...
This all reminds me of the fuel consumption figures published by car manufacturers, which have no connection to real world performance.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
This is very old news. Multi-window Android is already here for literally years. Made by Samsung.
As someone who has never bought a Samsung device, that's not terribly helpful.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
No, I'm positing that your wife is doing lots of video calls to her lover that you don't know about.
And that as well as being a cuckold, you don't understand the scientific method.
First of all, cucklod is a verb, the noun form is cuck. Second, I'm through being civil with you, go fuck yourself.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Wrong. Read some Shakespeare, moron.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Huh, then i've never actually heard anyone use it correctly. Thank you for the correction and go fuck yourself.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I'm glad you are beginning to see you don't know everything. Next stop, the scientific method...
Right after you get done fucking yourself.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.