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This is, again, the case of "you don't exist"...This is, again, the case of "you don't exist"...Posted Dec 18, 2011 8:48 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252)In reply to: PCs and phones are fundamentally different... by pboddie Parent article: 2011: The Year of Linux Disappointments (Datamation)
If you've filled up your memory with what are effectively screenshots because you've "started" 100 applications, you should expect some of them not to reappear instantly at 50 frames per second in some tiresome animation. Nope. People don't understand this. Any OS which works like that will fail. Having them show up eventually is a lot better than having them show up immediately and then forgetting all their state. Well, it may be better for geeks like your and me, but it's much, much worse for Joe Average! People don't understand that application fill up the memory (heck, most need an explanation for what memory actually is first), if they understand then they forget all about it, etc. That's why set-top boxes with HDD remove (permanently remove at that!) old records, for example. People perceive smartphones not as electronic device, but as some kind of "magic tablet". They don't know and don't want to know how the whole thing works. That's why first iPhone was such a bomb: it was worse then most smartphones of the time (initially it had no support for apps!), but it was finally "magic tablet" which can be used without thinking about memory, tasks, etc. Sure, it had a lot of limitations (when you switched from one activity to another context was often lost, it had no copy-paste, etc), but it was finally usable by Joe Average, not just by eggheads!
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This is, again, the case of "you don't exist"... Posted Dec 18, 2011 14:06 UTC (Sun) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link] Nope. People don't understand this. Any OS which works like that will fail. I know you can't resist contradicting everyone, but plenty of people who don't work in software development are perfectly capable of realising that they have, in their own words, "filled up" or "overloaded" their device. You can argue that they have had to develop such notions through experience with technology that did not attempt to hide its own limitations, but people are pretty quick to notice and adapt to the limitations of things they use. It is also good design for devices to communicate their limitations gracefully. (And before you respond with the patronising "you don't get it - you're an egghead" remarks or rhetorical questions about whether people should be forced to micromanage their device's resources, just bear in mind that I'm not advocating anything of the sort. Being able to disregard the mechanisms involved and to have a device juggle potentially excessive resource demands is a form of liberation for the user, but it becomes a form of frustration if the user demands more than the device can deliver without being warned about it in advance.) I don't really know why I'm having this discussion: I don't even have a smartphone, and the benefits of running multiple applications at a time on a phone would probably be marginal for me. But given that modern operating systems rely on multiple concurrently-running processes, I agree with the complainant that having the benefits already provided generally by the operating system (not something that can be said about those old Palm devices) stripped away in favour of an inferior solution providing fewer benefits specifically within a framework has led to a suboptimal experience for users and developers.
I beg to differ... Posted Dec 18, 2011 14:57 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] But given that modern operating systems rely on multiple concurrently-running processes, I agree with the complainant that having the benefits already provided generally by the operating system (not something that can be said about those old Palm devices) stripped away in favour of an inferior solution providing fewer benefits specifically within a framework has led to a suboptimal experience for users and developers. Well, this was "obvious" for phone makers from the onset: BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Phone - they all supported multitasking for more then a decade. But then someone decided to "strip these benefits" in the favor of "useless eyecandy". And people beat records repeatedly in a rush to buy these phones with "suboptimal experience for users and developers"... Don't you think that this is... kind of strage? "Suboptimal experience" leads to record sales, rave reviews in press, etc? IMO it just shows that people have different values and for most "true multitasking" is simply less valuable then "smooth hassle-less experience"...
I beg to differ... Posted Dec 19, 2011 22:08 UTC (Mon) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
You always beg to differ. However, even the original iPhone was a success for a few factors other than the eye candy, which it probably doesn't have that much of in comparison to the recent models. Take the serious treatment of Web browsing - a browser with a decent pedigree instead of the awful embedded browsers on most devices of the era - and the willingness to have both WLAN and GSM on the same device, plus the emphasis on Google services that I'm sure many people now wish to sweep under the carpet as if it never played a role in the success of that device.
Yes, sure. But how was Apple able to do that? Posted Dec 19, 2011 23:09 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Take the serious treatment of Web browsing - a browser with a decent pedigree instead of the awful embedded browsers on most devices of the era ...which Apple was able to offer because it knew browser can use all (or almost all) of the available memory since it'll be the only app running. and the willingness to have both WLAN and GSM on the same device Which was already old news at the time. iPaq 6315 in US and Nokia 9500 in the rest of the world offered the same capability three years earlier and in 2006 even midrange models like Samsung i730 and Nokia N80 had it. Sure, dual (GSM/WiFi) capability was important for iPhone but it was a means, not the goal. plus the emphasis on Google services that I'm sure many people now wish to sweep under the carpet as if it never played a role in the success of that device. Oh, sure, YouTube was pretty big attraction. But this just shows that you can not reach success by just blindly showing features in your phone. You need an attractive experience - and if you can not deliver it and multitasking at the same timeĀ then multitasking must go. You may reintroduce it later when platform will be more capable. Even so Apple was not quite ready to add full multitasking to iPhone 4: apparently it was still not powerful enough. They introduced checkpoint/restore system which is even more limited then Android's one. It's all about tradeoffs and if your system is not powerful enough to support both multitasking and smooth, pleasant, experience then most people will want pleasant experience.
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