Unfortunately, I think that what you are describing is a big part of the problem - many Android 2.x apps scale well enough that they don't need to be modified for the tablet. This allows developers to ignore the fact that UI's developed for a small phone screen aren't really optimized for users of a tablet.
On the iPad, apps look pretty bad in most cases if they haven't been ported over. This pressures app developers to create tablet-oriented apps that rethink the use of screen real-estate. Sure, I've got developer friends that just tweaked the graphics and released an iPad version of an app, but for the most part, iPad apps are taking advantage of the different screen size to optimize the user experience. Take a look at the most successful iPad apps and you'll realize that the user experience wouldn't translate successfully back to the iPhone. The flip-side is true - a UI designed for a tiny screen doesn't make a good user experience on a large screen. Apps like Angry Birds are an exception, where the tablet version can essentially be a scaled-up version of the phone app.
This is leads to an unfortunate situation for the current flock of Honeycomb devices. When people go try out the tablets at the store, there is a big difference between the experience on an iPad 2. The apps just don't feel right, as they aren't optimized from a user experience point of view. This can be interpreted by the user in a number of ways, but to many it will seem incomplete, cheap, or a knock-off of the iPad.
I think that Android will be able to solve this in the future with the adoption of fragments. Worst case is that a fragment approach doesn't work well for a particular app and the developer has to rethink things and release a tablet optimized version. I suspect this will be the rare case.
I am no fan of software patents, but given the reality that we are living in, I think you are over simplifying quite a bit. A Microsoft patent for detecting and responding to waving wouldn't simply state "if the user waves, do XXX". Rather, the patent would cover a method for detecting that the user had waved, and then initiating the proper system response.
If detecting a wave is so obvious, could someone please reply with the process that would be used to detect a wave? Please include how you detect the body parts.
I just enjoy repeating that point over and over again because it always winds up the fanbois and one always bites - I believe the term is "shooting fish in a bucket".
+4 Funny - nice.
This comment would have been a lot funnier if it wasn't your fifth post in the past week where you brought up the Microsoft/Apple "bailout". Kind of a weird axe to grind if you ask me.
Who is flashing their phone if they aren't computer literate. I don't know anyone that has modded their phone other than me that isn't nerdy already. Mom and Pop seem pretty safe from this.
Well, we see a lot of posts on/. where people are advocating that their non-technical friends buy Android instead of an iPhone so that they can avoid the walled garden. I have to assume that they aren't suggesting they stick with a stock Android phone, as the vendors load the phones with so much crap-ware and the phones are just as locked down as the iPhone. I can only assume is that the advice is to buy an Android phone from a vendor and flash it. Doesn't this open a number of non-technical people to issues like this?
I understand your point (and the other replies at this level). I would say, it is becoming harder and harder to justifiably recommend an Android phone to a non-technical user. I would say, "try Android, it is a better choice than an iPhone, as you avoid the walled garden." However, based on many of the comments I've read on/. lately, I'm not sure this is a good thing:
-if they buy most Android phones, they find themselves locked into an even worse experience because of the crapware and lock-in that most every Android handset maker provides.
-they could unlock the phone. As trivial as this seems to you and me, if they can't do it with a single click button that is provided by default on the phone, it is likely too confusing.
-once they do unlock the phone, what are they supposed to do with it? Load cool apps that they find on the internet? As you point out, they lack the technical knowledge to understand the consequence.
The end question becomes - what does a non-technical user gain from us recommending that they buy an Android phone? What is the benefit over an iPhone? Are we trying so hard to stick it to Apple that we lose sight of the fact that the iPhone may really be the best choice for the non-technical user? Not trolling at all here, I'm curious what justifications people are using.
I would have to say that I personally disagree with this. Perhaps I fall into that aforementioned 1%. But I almost never listen to an individual song, but rather entire albums. (In fact, I hate Shuffle.) When I think of an "album" I typically relate this to a directory. I'll also duplicate songs. For example I might have an album by artist A and an album by Artist B. But then I might have a "Beach Music" album where I add one song from artist A and one from artist B into it. I actually duplicate the file on my hard drive.
If iTunes introduced the concept of albums and playlists would that address your need?
I dunno bout you, but I have a record collection of about 5k vinyl records. If I wanted to synch that to an Ipad, I'd have to have... a computer?
Seriously 64G, the most expensive one sold, just don't cut it, it's just not enough space.
That, and I have learned that when companies like this CAN change the rules at any time, they inevitably do... at will.
ALL my content is > TB on any given day. Now what?
You have to be trolling here. How are you getting your 5k vinyl records on a music player today without a computer? How are you accessing your > TB of music without a computer? What tablet/phone device are you using that has > TB storage?
To me, The Cloud (TM) was the SAN 10 years ago (storage area network), and it changes absolutely NOTHING. Except maybe now apple can cut you off from your own computer whenever they feel like it.
The summary is very light on details, so I can understand you misinterpreting this. iCloud isn't the only place your data is stored, it is actually stored on the iPad, iPhone, iPod, and Mac. It is just that all files are seamlessly shared between your different devices. Buy a song on iTunes on your Mac, and it is automatically available from your iPad. Take a picture on your iPhone, and it is automatically in iPhoto on your Mac.
You are right to an extent - this is nothing new from a tech perspective. What is new though is how Apple is presenting this to the user. They don't tell the user "map this drive to this location...", it all just happens automatically. That is this trick of the iCloud - the user doesn't explicitly interact with iCloud. Rather, files are just always available. The user doesn't have to understand what the cloud is or how to access it. The cloud is the means, not the end.
I think that the idea is that users don't interact with files and the file system. They interact with songs through the iTunes interface. I know there are a million and one reasons to do clever things with the file system organization for music, but I think that 99% of users don't really care about how their songs are laid out on the FS. They think of them as songs, not files.
"Unwillingness to conform" is a way nerds try to spin and justify their social anxiety.
You hit the nail on the head. People like you or they don't. They want to hang out with you or they don't. Trying too hard to be liked often has the opposite effect. Trying too hard to be cool almost always has the opposite effect.
Surprise, surprise - as you move through life and through different social circles, you may find yourself having different levels of popularity. Why focus so much on a short 3-year term?
Here is the net of it - the people who were popular in high school were popular because enough people liked them and wanted to hang out with them. Most people fall don't fall into this camp. Maybe you were awkward in high school, whether in looks or social behavior. Maybe you didn't do things that other people liked doing, or had dramatically different interests. You hung out with people with the same interests as you, or maybe with the same level of social skill. Well, that is what the popular kids were doing too. It doesn't make them wrong, and it doesn't make you wrong.
What makes people unpopular in the hallways of high school, mainly an unwillingness to conform
This is the typical view, "everyone else is a sheep except for me". Looking back at high school, I wouldn't say that popular people were popular because they conformed. Many were popular because they didn't conform. Others conformed to them. I don't think that these followers were necessarily popular because they conformed to the popular kids. Some were viewed as posers, while others were popular, because, well, they were likable.
That is the trick with popularity - either you have it or you don't. People will like you and want to be around you, or they won't. That will change depending on your setting - middle school, high school, college, work, music industry, actor, etc. When people try to be liked or try to be cool, they typically fail.
The lazy response is to classify all people not like you as sheep.
What if you can't drive to the store to buy the DVD?
What if you can't get the DVD mailed to your house?
What if you don't have an Apple computer to install the DVD on?
What if you don't have enough money to buy the DVD?
What about download caps that get in the way of downloading a 4-8 GB OS?
What about when you have like 3-5 systems and only want to download the os one time and use a disk or usbkey to load it on all of your systems?
What about systems that only have dial up and you need to go off site for higher speed downloads?
What about people with slow downloads in lots of areas 1.5 meg dsl is the best that you can get.
What about if you need to reload the os on a blank HDD?
Then you just buy it from the store like normal, instead of downloading it. Sheesh....
we have to keep old crufty features around for ONE customer. Its not necessarily easy to support and manage these things. To do it right entails a detailed configuration page to set the various feature options
So, to "do it right" you have to burden 100% of your users with a complex configuration page for features that only a single customer uses?
When I cancelled my account, I noticed a few interesting things:
1. My list of friends was significantly reduced from what it had been in the past, making me think that they cancelled their accounts.
2. Myspace is completely different looking than it was however long ago I last logged in. You wouldn't even recognize it now. Apparently when they redid the look, they wiped out any customized backgrounds that were set.
3. For some reason, myspace decided that I am following Justin Bieber, Russell Crowe, Tom Petty, and a whole slew of other celebrities, most of which I have never heard of. The entire content of my 'home' screen is a bunch of updates from bands and actors that I have no interest in.
4. None of my remaining friends have posted a comment in over a year.
5. I apparently 'earned' a 'badge' for joining myspace 'before it was cool'. I'm pretty sure I was a late adopter.
6. You can cancel your account, but it is a separate step process that involves you responding to a confirmation email. Perhaps that is reasonable. They grovel for you to stay at several points in the process.
I hope they're not afraid of a little competition and allow side-loading and other app stores. It's be a shame to see yet another device that you don't really own.
Like the Wii, PS3, X-Box, and the various handhelds?
I completely agree that $80 a month is ridiculous for a phone, or most any type of subscription. With that said, I am a bit tired of the generalization that anyone with a smart phone is just a trend-consious hipster trotting out a status symbol. I've never known anyone that fits this stereotype. Rather, I see people using the phone as a convenient appliance.
When I'm at the airport, I read the internet without paying to connect to some ridiculous wireless portal.
When I'm on a flight, I'll have about 4 slashdot stories that I can read pre-loaded on the phone. This will eat up about 30-60 minutes, depending on the topics. I can also play games or watch music videos, TV shows, or movies.
When I'm out at a restaurant and get stuck watching the table while my friends go outside for a smoke, I can check sports scores or my favorite websites.
When I'm stuck in a line at a grocery store, I can surf the web.
Please note, I'm not "jumping at every email/notification". I check my non-work email about twice a week. I typically forget to respond to text messages because I'm not much of a texter. My smartphone doesn't shackle me to the web. Instead it allows me to kill free time. Traveling is no longer a chore because I always have something to do. Waiting in a line isn't such a big deal because I have stuff that I can do. It is all just about convenience, and this is what I observe with other smartphone users. Insinuating that people are sheep with a desire for shiny trinkets is really just ignoring why appliances like smartphones and tablets are taking off.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder what percentage of 4G phone owners living in areas without 4G coverage think that they have 4G service?
Did we slashdot google+?!?!?
What computer monitor do you use to view the 3D photos and video?
Unfortunately, I think that what you are describing is a big part of the problem - many Android 2.x apps scale well enough that they don't need to be modified for the tablet. This allows developers to ignore the fact that UI's developed for a small phone screen aren't really optimized for users of a tablet.
On the iPad, apps look pretty bad in most cases if they haven't been ported over. This pressures app developers to create tablet-oriented apps that rethink the use of screen real-estate. Sure, I've got developer friends that just tweaked the graphics and released an iPad version of an app, but for the most part, iPad apps are taking advantage of the different screen size to optimize the user experience. Take a look at the most successful iPad apps and you'll realize that the user experience wouldn't translate successfully back to the iPhone. The flip-side is true - a UI designed for a tiny screen doesn't make a good user experience on a large screen. Apps like Angry Birds are an exception, where the tablet version can essentially be a scaled-up version of the phone app.
This is leads to an unfortunate situation for the current flock of Honeycomb devices. When people go try out the tablets at the store, there is a big difference between the experience on an iPad 2. The apps just don't feel right, as they aren't optimized from a user experience point of view. This can be interpreted by the user in a number of ways, but to many it will seem incomplete, cheap, or a knock-off of the iPad.
I think that Android will be able to solve this in the future with the adoption of fragments. Worst case is that a fragment approach doesn't work well for a particular app and the developer has to rethink things and release a tablet optimized version. I suspect this will be the rare case.
I am no fan of software patents, but given the reality that we are living in, I think you are over simplifying quite a bit. A Microsoft patent for detecting and responding to waving wouldn't simply state "if the user waves, do XXX". Rather, the patent would cover a method for detecting that the user had waved, and then initiating the proper system response.
If detecting a wave is so obvious, could someone please reply with the process that would be used to detect a wave? Please include how you detect the body parts.
Isn't the term "trolling"?
+4 Funny - nice. This comment would have been a lot funnier if it wasn't your fifth post in the past week where you brought up the Microsoft/Apple "bailout". Kind of a weird axe to grind if you ask me.
Well, we see a lot of posts on /. where people are advocating that their non-technical friends buy Android instead of an iPhone so that they can avoid the walled garden. I have to assume that they aren't suggesting they stick with a stock Android phone, as the vendors load the phones with so much crap-ware and the phones are just as locked down as the iPhone. I can only assume is that the advice is to buy an Android phone from a vendor and flash it. Doesn't this open a number of non-technical people to issues like this?
I understand your point (and the other replies at this level). I would say, it is becoming harder and harder to justifiably recommend an Android phone to a non-technical user. I would say, "try Android, it is a better choice than an iPhone, as you avoid the walled garden." However, based on many of the comments I've read on /. lately, I'm not sure this is a good thing:
-if they buy most Android phones, they find themselves locked into an even worse experience because of the crapware and lock-in that most every Android handset maker provides.
-they could unlock the phone. As trivial as this seems to you and me, if they can't do it with a single click button that is provided by default on the phone, it is likely too confusing.
-once they do unlock the phone, what are they supposed to do with it? Load cool apps that they find on the internet? As you point out, they lack the technical knowledge to understand the consequence.
The end question becomes - what does a non-technical user gain from us recommending that they buy an Android phone? What is the benefit over an iPhone? Are we trying so hard to stick it to Apple that we lose sight of the fact that the iPhone may really be the best choice for the non-technical user? Not trolling at all here, I'm curious what justifications people are using.
If iTunes introduced the concept of albums and playlists would that address your need?
You have to be trolling here. How are you getting your 5k vinyl records on a music player today without a computer? How are you accessing your > TB of music without a computer? What tablet/phone device are you using that has > TB storage?
The summary is very light on details, so I can understand you misinterpreting this. iCloud isn't the only place your data is stored, it is actually stored on the iPad, iPhone, iPod, and Mac. It is just that all files are seamlessly shared between your different devices. Buy a song on iTunes on your Mac, and it is automatically available from your iPad. Take a picture on your iPhone, and it is automatically in iPhoto on your Mac.
You are right to an extent - this is nothing new from a tech perspective. What is new though is how Apple is presenting this to the user. They don't tell the user "map this drive to this location...", it all just happens automatically. That is this trick of the iCloud - the user doesn't explicitly interact with iCloud. Rather, files are just always available. The user doesn't have to understand what the cloud is or how to access it. The cloud is the means, not the end.
I think that the idea is that users don't interact with files and the file system. They interact with songs through the iTunes interface. I know there are a million and one reasons to do clever things with the file system organization for music, but I think that 99% of users don't really care about how their songs are laid out on the FS. They think of them as songs, not files.
You hit the nail on the head. People like you or they don't. They want to hang out with you or they don't. Trying too hard to be liked often has the opposite effect. Trying too hard to be cool almost always has the opposite effect.
Surprise, surprise - as you move through life and through different social circles, you may find yourself having different levels of popularity. Why focus so much on a short 3-year term?
Here is the net of it - the people who were popular in high school were popular because enough people liked them and wanted to hang out with them. Most people fall don't fall into this camp. Maybe you were awkward in high school, whether in looks or social behavior. Maybe you didn't do things that other people liked doing, or had dramatically different interests. You hung out with people with the same interests as you, or maybe with the same level of social skill. Well, that is what the popular kids were doing too. It doesn't make them wrong, and it doesn't make you wrong.
This is the typical view, "everyone else is a sheep except for me". Looking back at high school, I wouldn't say that popular people were popular because they conformed. Many were popular because they didn't conform. Others conformed to them. I don't think that these followers were necessarily popular because they conformed to the popular kids. Some were viewed as posers, while others were popular, because, well, they were likable.
That is the trick with popularity - either you have it or you don't. People will like you and want to be around you, or they won't. That will change depending on your setting - middle school, high school, college, work, music industry, actor, etc. When people try to be liked or try to be cool, they typically fail.
The lazy response is to classify all people not like you as sheep.
What if you can't drive to the store to buy the DVD?
What if you can't get the DVD mailed to your house?
What if you don't have an Apple computer to install the DVD on?
What if you don't have enough money to buy the DVD?
Then you just buy it from the store like normal, instead of downloading it. Sheesh....
So, to "do it right" you have to burden 100% of your users with a complex configuration page for features that only a single customer uses?
Is this what passes for informative these days?
So what do you think about google clamping down on "variety" and "diversity"?
When I cancelled my account, I noticed a few interesting things:
1. My list of friends was significantly reduced from what it had been in the past, making me think that they cancelled their accounts.
2. Myspace is completely different looking than it was however long ago I last logged in. You wouldn't even recognize it now. Apparently when they redid the look, they wiped out any customized backgrounds that were set.
3. For some reason, myspace decided that I am following Justin Bieber, Russell Crowe, Tom Petty, and a whole slew of other celebrities, most of which I have never heard of. The entire content of my 'home' screen is a bunch of updates from bands and actors that I have no interest in.
4. None of my remaining friends have posted a comment in over a year.
5. I apparently 'earned' a 'badge' for joining myspace 'before it was cool'. I'm pretty sure I was a late adopter.
6. You can cancel your account, but it is a separate step process that involves you responding to a confirmation email. Perhaps that is reasonable. They grovel for you to stay at several points in the process.
The news is that you can actually cancel your account! Now, if I could just remember my password...
Like the Wii, PS3, X-Box, and the various handhelds?
I completely agree that $80 a month is ridiculous for a phone, or most any type of subscription. With that said, I am a bit tired of the generalization that anyone with a smart phone is just a trend-consious hipster trotting out a status symbol. I've never known anyone that fits this stereotype. Rather, I see people using the phone as a convenient appliance.
When I'm at the airport, I read the internet without paying to connect to some ridiculous wireless portal.
When I'm on a flight, I'll have about 4 slashdot stories that I can read pre-loaded on the phone. This will eat up about 30-60 minutes, depending on the topics. I can also play games or watch music videos, TV shows, or movies.
When I'm out at a restaurant and get stuck watching the table while my friends go outside for a smoke, I can check sports scores or my favorite websites.
When I'm stuck in a line at a grocery store, I can surf the web.
Please note, I'm not "jumping at every email/notification". I check my non-work email about twice a week. I typically forget to respond to text messages because I'm not much of a texter. My smartphone doesn't shackle me to the web. Instead it allows me to kill free time. Traveling is no longer a chore because I always have something to do. Waiting in a line isn't such a big deal because I have stuff that I can do. It is all just about convenience, and this is what I observe with other smartphone users. Insinuating that people are sheep with a desire for shiny trinkets is really just ignoring why appliances like smartphones and tablets are taking off.
How do you moderate a post as pretentious?