IOS After Android (what's been copied by Apple from Android)
techthirst.com
techthirst.com
Not a great article.
"since Android was built for multitasking, inactive applications remain in a saved state for a particular amount of time." -- uhh, this is exactly how it works on iOS.
"This doesn’t need to be strictly implemented by the developer, it’s a core part of the OS" and "is also means that multitasking will only work for an app if the developer specifically implements it" -- completely wrong. Compile the app with the iOS 4 SDK and you get it all for free. Background services like audio and VoIP require developer work though.
"iOS still missed the mark. On the iPad, the notification bar is super awkward and doesn’t scale well." -- citation needed. I actually prefer the iOS 5 notifications, as when they come in they are more conspicuous than the Android system.
"And the backwards compatible version of iOS4 for iPhone 3G slowed down the phone so much that users wanted to throw their phones out" -- 4.0 was a bit pants, but that was fixed pretty quickly, and worked reasonably well. And at least Apple actually provide updates to their older phones, unlike most Android OEM's.
"Even things like voice-chat were available on Android devices before the iPhone 4 was even announced" -- pretty sure the iPhone 1 could make voice calls.
"since iOS was not built from top-to-bottom for multi-tasking functionality, you have to address what continues to happen in the background as the user leaves app and you’re app has to scurry and get everything ready in within a short period of time, or iOS will completely shut it out"
This is just patently false. Multitasking was not an afterthought in this UNIX based OS, the absurdity of that claim reveals the thickness of the author's bias. This compromise was made to save battery life as well as to make sure users are aware of what their device is doing at any given moment.
There's a lot of other obviously stupid claims in there too, I'll leave those as an exercise for the reader.
So, in this regard, iOS was released without multitasking which was baked in some versions later. it's not like they only needed to switch the underlying OS features on.
Also: I don't see how this saves battery life if done properly, years before iOS and Android other mobile OS' did multitasking with a similar battery life then the iPhone.
The only point that stands is that Apple (may be) didn't want to confuse users with multiple running apps, but then again.. why did they implement it in the end anyway?
My opinion: It was obvious that the iphone will have multitasking (and copy&paste and wallpapers, and what not) at _some_ point in the future. Imagine Steve's presentations in the coming years (while announcing a new iPhone/iOS version) without those "big improvements". You keep those things hidden to have some new features to throw at your customers. Android just happened to be first on some of those..
Also, in your sense every phone on the planet had multitasking because I can speak and listen at the same time.it was obvious that I was talking about multitasking for apps
So in the end everyone seems to agree that Apple, although easily possible, didn't want to give multitasking to its customers. Sounds even worse to me..
In reality, Apple's implementation consciously limits what apps can do in the background to stop apps from draining battery life or generally doing things that the user is unaware of.
They deliberately limited functionality to provide a feature. They then provided more functionality which removed some of those original limitations.
Power efficiency has nothing to do with it in the slightest.
It's a lot harder to leave out features than adding. You have to be carefull about what you leave out, make sure you don't touch core-functionality, and make sure the features that are present are done brilliantly, because they will be in the spotlight, all the time. I'm not saying Apple does this flawlessly, I'm not a blind fanboy, they have serious misses (notifications pre-IOS5, Calendar app, IOS folders, ...) - but they do this a lot better than anyone else.
To be honest, I never had problems with "missing" features (except calendar/call overview in the lock screen), but more problems with the implementation of features that were present, but not executed well enough.
It was however intentionally crippled to not allow arbitrary application-level multitasking because Apple decided it didn't serve them well. So as far as a normal user was concerned the OS was incapable of multitasking.
So while inaccurate, that statement is not entirely off. You could not create an application and reliably have it do stuff in the background on iOS.
Apart from that I have to disagree with your statement: I find the rest entirely reasonable and valid criticism. And I have no doubt about the conclusion: The future of iOS will be more blatant stealing from Android.
And that is OK. Really it is. Just stop that nonsense about Apple being the innovator.
The only reasonable thing in that article is the part about notifications, because Apple clearly followed Android on those. The rest is concentrated Android fanboyism.
But then again, a notification bar instead of a popup is not the most ground-breaking idea. It's a pity (and a bit silly) that they didn't implement that earlier, for sure.
> There's a lot of other obviously stupid claims in there too, I'll leave those as an exercise for the reader
That's not how arguing against a point works.
As opposed to the Android model where all apps get free reign to drain the users battery life unless the user explicitly kills the app. Task killers are quite a popular application on Android for this reason.
As to the notion that Apple stole the notion of multitasking on a mobile device from Android, I'm pretty sure that Apple engineers knew about multitasking before Android implemented it. Apple made the very difficult (but correct) decision to sacrifice functionality to protect the overall user experience.
As for multitasking, it's been around for a long time sure, but there are various implementation details that are in common among Android and iOS (but not Mango or webOS necessarily). I have no desire to point fingers of "theft" or "copying" but inspiration doesn't seem unthinkable.
Also, Apple has a long history of not being very good at mufti-tasking. OSX was the first Apple OS that had modern pre-emptive multitasking, a good 5 years after Windows and decades after Unix. Pre-emptive multi-tasking just means that the OS divies up CPU time between applications without the applications being aware of it, so many programs can run at the same time without being specifically written to allow this. Apple was handed multitasking for free in the form of the BSD code OSX is built on.
OS9, interestingly enough, had non-preemptive multitasking. The OS would never take control away from a program, but rather, meekly wait for programs to hand it back. This meant that multi-tasking could work only so long as all programs you were using were specifically written for it. In reality, few were, and just one program not written for multi-tasking would seize control and lock out all other programs. Imagine working on an OS this backwards 5 years after Windows 95 came out! OS9 was indeed a product of the dark age of Apple.
Multi-tasking in iOS is strangely similar to that of OS9 in that it isn't handled by the OS invisibly regardless of how applications are written. Applications must be written to allow multitasking. It's not quite as bad as OS9 in that one poorly written application won't bring your iOS device to a screeching halt, but it's still an extremely backwards approach and ample evidence that Apple still doesn't understand multi-tasking.
The argument that Apple has deliberately done this because it's good for battery-performance is idiotic. You don't build the foundations of an OS that could be around for decades around limitations of current generation hardware. Battery consumption is already a much less important issue than it was two years ago and it will continue to become less and less important since the power efficiency of mobile devices is actually growing faster than Moore's law. In five years Apples poor implementation of multi-tasking, and all the code written to make use of it, will still be a big mess to clean up. Even if current generation Android hardware were experiencing poorer battery performance (and they generally don't) because of Android sane implementation of multi-tasking, it would be a small price to pay compared to what Apple has ahead.
The real reason Apple has designed iOS this way is, as with OS9, because they just don't know any better.
Your implication that somehow real multitasking is some kind of black art that nobody at Apple understands and only exists because they acquired Next is ridiculous.
As for iOS, Apple totally made the right call here and introduced it when the hardware and battery became ready. Did you ever use a G1? They were ridiculous, even today, Android is a complete mess when it comes to doing a good job of sandboxing apps and their use of CPU.
I love Android and have carried one for years, but their biggest wart is just that. Everybody used to joke that if you used WindowsMobile you had to use a task manager to keep it running, Android isn't far off. You get a lot of power through its use of multi-tasking, but because they are less strict than Apple you also easily get into a state where your battery lasts for shit.
iOS is far, far, stricter in this regard, and it can make it a pain to program to, but the overall user experience is way better. For the vast majority of apps the user has no idea whether multi-tasking even exists.. all they know is that they leave the app and when they come back things are just as they were. iOS's strategy of just saving the state and killing everything works brilliantly for 80% of the apps and has made the phone have a fantastic user experience.
Yes, they had to evolve to allow background services, and they did, but carefully.
Enough with the fanboyism, each platform has its strengths, but make your arguments on reasonable foundations.
Really?
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4686/samsung-galaxy-s-2-intern...
I don't know where to begin constructing an argument to refute this.
How about, um, I don't know, the existence of OSX?
Boo.
Because painting Apple as the one doing copying will get you flagged the hell out of forums like this one.
So yeah. This gets flagged, but Gruber's trollbait and Apple-praise goes? Facts are bad, but reinforced, artificially rosed up Apple-gardens are good? WTH.
Can we please have an "unflag"-button to save articles from the censorship of Apple fanatics? Pretty please? iPlease?
So then came along the iPhone. It did exactly what I needed, I bought a 3G the moment it was available here in Europe. Then came Android. As a long-time embedded developer, suddenly, mobile applications became important. I now develop for both iOS and Android, and know both platforms pretty well. Android in my opinion is a geek's toy, and just like the Linux desktop "good enough", but not quite there yet. Simply put, iOS is way more polished. On some levels it does less, but what it does, it most likely does a lot better (viewed from a user pov). There are off course exceptions, Apple is not flawless - it's unbelievable that only now in the 5th major release their notifications-system is improved, and the lockscreen would finally be used to actually display usefull information. Another problem is the calendar app, which looks nice on the surface, but it's pretty useless for day-to-day use (luckily there is Week Cal). And don't even mention folders. I hate them, they're useless, and put apps in a dungeon to be forgotten forever. Anyway, these complaints are minor compared to my gripes with Android. I won't even start going down that path. Yes I tried the Nexus One and Nexus S we have here at the office extensively, I still take them with me when I have to travel for work-related work so I don't end up with massive personal phone bills.
And then came along tablets. I skipped the first generation iPad, I always wait for 2nd generation for most new stuff. Along came the "competitor" tablets. Ever played with a Xoom? No? Good advice: keep it that way. Playbook? Avoid like hell. Samsung galaxy tab? The 10" is ok-ish. Not great, but usable - but spend my own money on it? No tx... Weird thing is, my biggest problem isn't necessarily Android (which isn't exactly "nice" on a tablet), but the 16:10 display, it's simply horrible for a tablet... Why do people think an aspect ratio for watching a movie (which is about ehm 5% of the things I do on my iPad2) should dictate the form factor? So as I said, I bought an iPad 2, and I'm very happy with it. From time to time, a test-sample of some unknown tablet is dropped on my desk to look at. The only-one I haven't seen is the Touchpad, which I would love to have.
Anyway, I am still daily confronted with Android phones, blackberries, windows mobile - I have to develop for it. I do know these platforms very well, it's my job. And I think Android is absolutely necessary to push competition, not only Apple, but also Windows Mobile 7, which is actually pretty impressive imho. Too bad WebOS probably doesn't have a future, this had a shared 2nd place with winmo7 on my mobile OS list. Android is 3rd, followed by Meego and then Blackberry OS, which I absolutely detest.
So please don't pretend other people never used anything else while you try to bash iOS and Apple... Nothing is black & white. Both Apple, Google, Microsoft, HP, Intel, Nokia, ... are companies trying to act in their own interest. Don't fool yourself, no mobile OS is perfect, but it's very hard to point out things iOS does worse than any competing OS.
I wonder if you ever even touched an iPhone or iOS device? You certainly never used one.
I was stuck with one for over two years. An iPhone 3G.
It was my replacement phone for my old Windows Mobile phone (some HTC S730 or something) and the level of polish on that iPhone was amazing. It blew me away.
For a while it made me accept its locked down nature, all the things my old phone could do, but this one could not. I even accepted fucking iTunes. The polish made it all OK.
But as I used it more and more, added more apps, I saw how none of them played together. I noticed every single time that how no matter what you wanted to do, the only way to do that was go back to the homescreen, locate another app, then re-locate your data, then continue working on what you wanted to do.
Want to shoot a picture, modify the colours and then upload that modified picture to facebook? Well start the camera app. Close. Go back to home, and find and open your picture editor app. Then navigate and relocate your picture. Edit. Save. Then go back to the homescreen, open the facebook app and the click post and then try to relocate your now modified image and I'm sure you get my idea.
This OS has absolutely no flow. There is polish, but there is no true elegance to anything on that platform.
Every minor little thing involves hastles, indirection. Because the OS was designed to do simple things and simple things only. The OS itself smears its own inelegance onto everything it runs.
My example was only for a picture. For other file-types iOS doesn't even allow inter-app interaction because as we all know, "iOS devices has no files".
In Android? Shoot, send to editor, edit, send to Facebook. Done. How simple is that? And I've never even touched a file. But I can if I want to. And this is very important.
Eventually iOS drove me crazy. It was artificailly limited, crippled, had a too simple design and everything it did was flawed somehow, just to accommodate that sense of polish.
I see Apple are doing desperate catching up these days to try to get on level with Android in terms of sophistication, but iOS is simply at its core too simple to allow that. The additions to bring it up Androids levels feels tacked on, not designed and as a part of the experience.
So trust me: I've certainly used an iOS device, for long periods of time. For a while I even thought I liked it. But I am very certain that I will never, ever set my foot in iOS country again. It just feels wrong, locked down and artificial. And every tiny action you do creates squeaky noises. Squeaky noises saying "you need to go back to the homescreen and start all over again. Again".
Thanks but no thanks.
It is my humble opinion that iOS has been a stale OS for a very long time now, and the only innovation happening on iOS is as a result of direct copying from Android. As this (now censored) article so very clearly highlights. But try to start a discussion about such a topic on HN, and you will get labeled troll and censored or driven off site.
You get censored because you say Apple is not an innovator. Why? I don't know. I could guess weird conspiracy theories. Or I could just assume that there are enough Apple fanatics on this site which instantly doesn't like what they see and clicks "flag".
I honestly don't know, but anything critical against Apple gets shot down dead on this site like no other place on the internet. And if I know that level of censoring is happening on one subject which I pay attention to, what about those other topics?
Are they being censored as well? What are being censored here on HN? Currently I find the uncertainty about that somewhat startling and I have considered stopping going here for that reason.
It goes more like this: Apple sees that Android has vastly superior notifications. Apple concludes, "We need better notifications". Apple implement a better notification system that shares certain features with Android's system, but in other ways is unique.
Yes, they respond to market pressure. Yes, they borrow ideas. They also innovate. I do not see any difference between Apple and Google in this regard.
iOS has had turn-by-turn navigation available at least as long as Android - it just has it in the form of third-party applications such as TomTom. For, say, $39 you can install ~1GB of map data on the iPhone. You then not only have turn-by-turn but you can also navigate in areas where there's no cellphone signal.
We could play that game all day long. Let's just save our energy for something constructive ;)
About the only thing I missed from my Treo was a) Bookworm app which showed up later in 18 months, and the customizable "home area code" (unfortunately still not here).
Who are those "people"?
Sounds like the author is debating a position that few people actually hold.
http://random.andrewwarner.com/what-googles-android-looked-l...
And San Fransisco bloggers writing in a coffee-shop on leached wifi on their Macbook Airs. These people have never heard about anything at all until Apple announces it at a keynote.
The people who didn't consider "Folders. Reinvented" a joke, they say so.
You know... These kind of people. The say that.
Make of that what you like, but at least I am intellectually honest about it.