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Comment by leokun | Hacker News Reader

It's funny how all these things that have been in Android forever and were criticized for their battery draining powers are suddenly the latest and greatest reason why Apple phones are the best. It's just the way it goes, remember 7 inch tablets? Worst thing ever and everyone lists reasons why. Until Apple made one. Marketshare means everything! Until Android stole that, now market share is a false signal. King of profits! Until Samsung took that too. Keep moving that goal post.

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You forget a few things. On Android can't the app just run forever and decide on its own how often to poll the servers? This is a different thing. The OS decides when to schedule things if the app supports it.

Also battery life has improved a great deal since the first Android or iPhone device came out. What may have been true years ago isn't necessarily an issue anymore.

iOS will actually disable these features if the battery is getting low. It will also group them together so that the wireless chips are on as briefly as possible.

iOS will actually disable these features if the battery is getting low.

Like Battery Saver?

http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/how-to/wp8/basics/battery-...

Great - another option. I prefer my phone deciding when to do this automatically (and maybe an option to disable it so I can run it into the ground if absolutely necessary).

I prefer magic, too, if it works. I doubt it does in this case, though, and I get the impression Apple knows it hasn't nailed it yet, either. At least, elsewhere in this thread people note Apple's stuff can be overridden on a per-app basis.

I also get the impression that Apple's idea about the perfect balance between flexibility and "it just works" neighs more towards the latter than Google's ideas about it, as witnessed by some remarks that Google's Sync adapters that app developers _can_ use are exactly the same as Apple's solution that app developers _must_ use.

While I do agree that iOS isn't nearly as flexible as Android, let's just say that 90% of the time you might want to go with a Sync adapter versus rolling your own solution. Also, I believe that Apple has the best intentions at heart when it comes to implementing Background Fetching in it's current spec. I mean, lets face it, it's way better to have a mobile-optimized OS manage resources than for you to do so, don't you agree?

As I said, I prefer magic, too. More precise: The user in me agrees; the hacker disagrees. The hacker would like to see a 'make world' in each phone.

Bad developers do have that power. But best practice is to use a SyncAdapter, which works very similarly.

Actually, one of the biggest savings comes from apps all syncing at about the same time... firing up the cell modem is expensive, cheaper to do a bunch of transfers at once than spread out over time.

You mean like using Android's SyncAdapter and setting inInexactRepeating()? Android has supported this basic type of background scheduling since the start of time. The main difference is that Android you can do more - which can be abused. And their solution for abuse is a battery monitor that allows you to see which app is using the most battery. In a way you can say Android is more superior/powerful or you can say that the iOS is more limiting and thus potentially more user friendly.

Yes and that's a much better starting point for a discussion :-D

Unfortunately, I think many Android app developers either don't know or care about "API abuse". When my Android phone is sitting "idle" with the display off, adb logcat still shows tons of debug logging from apps doing more work than they should. I like the freedom that Android gives developers, but, as you suggest, I think iOS provides a better user experience.

I can think of many ways Google could fix some of this bad behavior by throttling apps running in the background.

Yeah, some apps suck on Android, leave unnecessary services running etc. I uninstall them, and leave a review stating why.

Feature X is neither the worst thing in the world it's ridiculous that Android did it! Nor is it an unallowed good, it's completely ridiculous that iOS didn't immediately o it! (as whatever the opposite of apple fanboys would have said; hateboys?)

Rather, it's a feature with some negative repurcussions as well as benefits, some possible tradeoffs.

Apple, for better or for worse, these days, esp on iOS, generally chooses not to jump into such features right away. They wait until they can expend the developer time on them to consider all the trade-offs and all the choices and different decisions that could be made in implementing that feature. And then they spend that time, and try to implement the feature in a way that minimizes downsides, maximizes upsides, and minimizes technical debt too.

Doesn't mean they always get it right. And this strategy itself, even when gotten right, has it's own pro's and con's -- there are certainly reasons, especially for hackers, to prefer Android's wild west over Apple's walled garden.

But there are evaluations that are neither "Android was stupid to implement it 5 years ago" nor "Apple was stupid NOT to implement it 5 years ago."

My comments are not actually about Apple, but of the pro-Apple blogger commenter types and their side commentary.

Your comment actually is a good example of anti-Apple comment type, and that's it.

I actually quite like Apple products, specifically Macbook Pros and iPads, so that's just miscommunication.

And here comes the typical (and tired) one-two punch.

1. Blame something on Apple "fanboys" or commentariat.

2. When someone calls you out proclaim "but I use/like a Mac".

Maybe you should reflect on why some people who use and like macs are not fans of Apple fanboy commentary.

Maybe you should reflect on why some people who are not fans of Apple fanboy commentary are _also_ not fans of comments that exist for no purpose except complaining about Apple fanboy commentary, in vague complaints about how "those guys always say this, but look, now they say that!"

We are not fans of apple fanboy commentary, AND we don't care.

What's really funny is how right you are, and all the comments made in response to you are proving that the reality distortion field is still in effect post-Jobs. When a competitor does it and Apple says they won't, it's the worst thing in the world. Once the competitor proves its worth and Apple does it, it's now the best thing ever (see xutopia). If you're right but with one hint of an arguable point, there's always some detail that means you're wrong and Apple is right (see simonh and nsxwolf). And if you're indisputably right, you're a fanboy whiner (see epo).

No one can possibly imagine that there could be an alternative (but still correct) choice if that wasn't the choice they themselves made.

As I understand it, it's not the same as Android though.

The app requests to wake up at intervals, and if the OS decides it's OK (based upon battery, network activity and how often you use the app) the app is granted that access.

I'm going to call you out on this one. You're dismissing perfectly viable criticism as "fanboyism".

The mechanisms are wildly different:

On Android the app developer chooses if he is a good citizen or not and can if he puts the effort to use the SyncAdapter (Bobz mentions this in the thread). The SyncAdapter afaik provide the same benefits as the iOS method.

On iOS the app developer can only provide the hooks for the OS to call and the OS decides when to call them. This is similar to how SyncAdapter works from what I can tell.

So Android provides developers with the capability to shoot the proverbial foot. We can argue that it's a good or a bad thing based on that but calling people fanboys isn't conducive to a good discussion.

I didn't call anyone a fanboy, I was quoting epo during the only time I mentioned that word. What I brought up was the reality distortion field. What you're describing is Apple doing the same thing as Android but with the only difference being developers have to use the equivalent of SyncAdapter. That's not wildly different, that's literally been baked into Android since long before Apple decided to adopt that model as well. Apple's contribution is subtle refinement to make it fit Apple's model better.

Apple has a great method of taking existing ideas, refining them until they shine, and putting them into a beautiful product. I have nothing against that, it's helped the industry immensely. I hope Apple keeps making improvements year over year and pushing the market along. What I take offense with is Apple's audience pretending these features never existed before, or that they were bad ideas then but great ideas now. That's exactly what I'm seeing you and others in this thread doing.

Well, saying people are under a reality distortion field is de facto calling someone a fanboy, in my opinion. Personally, I agree with some of what you're saying, but it kind of sounds like you've taken a straw man and run with it.

"Apple's audience pretending these features never existed before or that they were bad ideas then but great ideas now." First off, that's a wild generalization. Who is saying that? Sounds like you saw some random comments on the internet and now that represents a whole group of people that you disagree with.

"That's exactly what I'm seeing you and others in this thread doing."

Really? Xutopia's comments seem pretty reasonable to me. He pointed out a minor, but key difference. It's true, it's not "wildly different", but it is a significant, non-negligible difference. I don't see how him pointing that out turns him into your current bogie man.

I'd also venture that that key difference is where your "Apple audience" had an issue, not your claim that background updates as a whole was somehow seen as the devil. It could be abused by developers, and it was.

Arron61's comment more reasonably addresses how that was handled, and so yes, at times, you would have to do manual power management with certain unscrupulous apps. I think that aspect of it is/was annoying, but I've never thought the general idea of background tasks/multitasking as a whole was bad; that's just silly. And that's significantly different than the attribution you are making.

I should have known better than to get drawn into this discussion. You're right that no one in this thread specifically stated that these are brand new ideas, but you can't argue that people are stating that it was bad in Android but good in iOS. It all comes back to the user choice vs walled garden argument. There's the Android way of doing it, and the Apple way of doing it. You say it's a significant difference; the difference is simply in Apple not letting people do something they could do in Android. The parts that overlap are almost exactly the same. Think of how many people believe that the iPod was the first MP3 player, the iPhone was the first smartphone, and the iPad was the first tablet. Do you think that's by mistake, or because Apple really wants people to think that? How often on HN do I hear people making the claim that Apple beat Microsoft to the tablet and smartphone game? [1]

"On Android can't the app just run forever and decide on its own how often to poll the servers? This is a different thing. The OS decides when to schedule things if the app supports it. What may have been true years ago isn't necessarily an issue anymore."

"When a competitor does it and Apple says they won't, it's the worst thing in the world. Once the competitor proves its worth and Apple does it, it's now the best thing ever"

Sure I'm using hyperbole, but I think I adequately summed up the argument. xutopia implied that Android's battery life suffered from having background jobs running, and that this was a bad thing. Since Apple is only letting the jobs run at predefined intervals and all at the same time to save battery life, this is a good thing. That is exactly "it was bad when Android was doing it, and it's good when iOS is doing it". I accept that perhaps he didn't know how Android's background scheduler works, but that still says to me "background tasks are a bad thing except when Apple does it."

You're also conveniently ignoring that I called out just about everyone who had responded at that point, not just xutopia. xutopia's comment was the least offensive of all of them, and I certainly understand his argument. Apple is doing it in one of the many correct ways. It's not, however, significantly different from how Android recommends developers accomplish the same task. The only difference is, on Android this is discretionary and on iOS this is enforced. Neither of these are bad things.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6264617

This is a discussion I participated in not that long ago where people were legitimately stating that Windows Mobile and Windows tablets don't count because the iPhone and Android phones look different and have faster processors. I just gave up.

Sure, except for minor details like, you know, Apple still making more money on phones than Samsung, the mini having around 40% greater screen area than the 7" Android tablets, Apple never having actually had or claimed to have a market share lead in smartphones. Plus the fact we don't know what the effects of iOS7 will be on battery life yet. You know, minor little niggles like that.

It's less funny that we always transform this kind of information as an apple vs android fact.

I was reading the article thinking: "Uh oh, now let's see the comments on HN..."

Someone things in life can be relied on. If you could find a way to generate power from fandroid whining the energy crisis would be over.

Apple did not make a 7 inch tablet.

What do you call the iPad mini? ciel(7.9) inch tablet?

A 7.9 inch tablet, which is much larger than a 7 inch tablet.

The two standard product classifications is "7 inch tablet" and "10 inch tablet". Those are standardized names, even though there is really no 10" tablet and really no 7" tablet. The iPad is grouped in with 10" tablet even though the screen size is slightly less than 10".

Similar to how the iPhone 5 has a 4" screen, but it's much smaller than a normal 4" screen in width. That's the product category. "7 inch tablet" as a market segment doesn't mean exactly 7 inches. Just because Apple said they'd never make a 7" tablet doesn't mean their product doesn't compete in the 7 inch tablet market.

Do you realize how ridiculous you sound?

I sound ridiculous because people miscategorized the iPad mini into the same category as the Nexus 7?

Have you used both? Two very different experiences.

So I'm saying the two categories are insufficient. The iPad mini is a compact iPad. It's a third category. 7" tablets are more like large smartphones.

>Two very different experiences.

Well its a good thing the parent is saying they're just two items in a category. Not two exact same things.

I would say that the iPad is not a tablet because it doesn't have a x86 processor nor does it run Windows Tablet Edition. The iPad is a larger smartphone, and the iPad Mini is a smaller larger cell phone.

I hope I don't sound ridiculous because someone miscategorized the iPad in the same category as Windows XP Tablet Edition.

Slightly less than how strung out you sound. Relax.

Isn't the Nexus 7 7.81"?

Including the bezel, yes. The 7 usually refers to the screen size, which on the Nexus is 7" diagonal (and 7.9" diagonal on the Mini).

No, 7.02"

More importantly, it's a 4:3 tablet. I HATE 16:9 for anything but watching movies - just less usable real-estate.

Why are almost all Android tablets 16:9?

www.pocketables.com/2013/01/the-ipad-mini-has-me-convinced-that-a-43-android-tablet-is-a-good-idea.html

"Worst thing ever and everyone lists reasons why."

Who is everyone? Where? Those people over there?

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