The Competition: iPhone OS 4.0 vs webOS in depth 155
Multitasking. Unified email inboxes. Multiple Exchange accounts. Welcome to the future, our iPhone-toting friends. Well, eventually you’ll get there. Apple last week provided a preview of iPhone OS 4.0, and it looked vaguely familiar to those of us that have been using webOS. There are two truly big features that will be part of iPhone OS 4.0, with multitasking being the one that most users will care about. The implementation, however, is less than impressive.
Here’s the thing, as Rene Ritchie over at TiPb has pointed out before, webOS’ cards metaphor for multitasking seems to be an extension of what Apple did for managing multiple open pages in mobile Safari, with a dash of gestures thrown in for good measure. If you were to ask me, I'd say that’s more than likely what Steve Jobs and Co. would have preferred to do (and probably were preparing to do) for multitasking on the iPhone. But as important as multitasking is for the future of the iPhone platform, their perception as a leading innovator is also important, so just copying what Palm has done would be a PR disaster.
Instead, Apple is left with this quasi-dock thing that you get when you double-tap on the home button. In here is a sliding row of all the currently running apps, you slide around to find the one you want and jump into it. It’s less than ideal, at least to our eyes. It also seems that, unlike webOS, apps won’t actually be running in the background. Certain app services will run in the background, but as best as we can tell, the full app is not. Scott Forstall (Senior VP of iPhone software) explained that there are seven multitasking APIs that developers can take advantage of, including background audio, background VOIP, location services (GPS and cell tower triangulation), and local notifications (not location-based notifications, just notifications from apps on the phone without first going through the server).
All-in-all, that should provide basic multitasking functionality for most apps. But what about controlling those apps while using others, as with webOS? Can’t say that’s going to get much better, as Apple’s demonstrations still were hobbled by the modal deal-with-it-now notifications for everything. And forget about controlling something like Pandora while checking Tweetie, you still have to double-tap for the multitasking dock, slide over to Pandora, call it back up, hit next, double-tap for the multitasking dock, slide back over to Tweetie, and bring it back to the front. And if you want to "close" an app (we say close, because it's more like you're just removing it from your recently-used list), you have to hold on it till it starts to wiggle, and then hit the "minus" button to close. Like I said, Steve’s still kicking himself over letting Palm beat them to the elegant multitasking punch.
This method of managing multitasking reminds this Palm OS old timer of something. Though we didn't call it multitasking back in 2002 - we called it Palm OS 5.0 with multi-threading. No apps specifically ran in the background, but certain threads (music from pTunes, email fetching in Chattermail, etc) could still run while we did other things. It was less than elegant then, and it's not at all elegant eight years later.
Oh, and did I mention that multitasking will only be coming to the current generation of iPhone OS products? The iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 3rd gen will be getting iPhone OS 4.0 over the summer, and the iPad won’t get it until the Fall. iPhone 3G and iPod Touch 2nd gen will get 4.0, but no multitasking. Original iPhone and iPod Touch users are being left out in the cold. We can’t say that surprises us too much - the hardware on these devices simply isn’t as powerful, nor will the 3GS be as powerful as whatever comes next from Cupertino. But it is worth noting that every update to webOS has brought the same new features to every webOS device, from the lowly Pixi all the way to the RAM-packed Pre Plus.
The other biggie for the iPhone, at least for those of us that manage multiple email addresses, is the unified inbox. And that’s what it is - all of your mail in a single inbox, and separately if you so desire. Just like on webOS. You can even add multiple Microsoft Exchange accounts to iPhone OS 4.0. Just like on webOS. What isn’t just like webOS is the addition of threaded messaging, as with Gmail and Apple’s own Mail app on Mac OS X. Threaded messaging (and proper Gmail integration) is a much-needed update for webOS email, right behind speed and more speed.
So that’s where Apple has caught up to Palm, at least in spirit (execution remains to be seen). But Apple had showed off seven key features last week, so what else is there to talk about?
Let’s look at app folders. The new “folders” for iPhone OS 4.0 allow a user to drag one app icon onto another to create a stack of app icons, tapping on it opens the subfolder. Given the iPhone OS’s app launcher UI, it was a necessity, as they locked themselves into fixed-grid pages of apps. Jobs pointed out that by being able to group apps together you can now see over 2000 installed apps on an iPhone. To that I say this: “Who the hell installs 2000 apps?” 185,000 apps is an impressive statistic. 32 GB of memory is a lot. More than 2000 visible apps on your phone is meaningless.
Are folders something we need to help with app management on webOS? While the option would be nice, we’re going to lean towards ‘not really.’ By allowing us to put as many apps as we want on a page, it’s quite easy to categorize app categories (like games, as demonstrated for the iPhone) by page. What we do need is for Palm to flip the switch on the add/delete page option in webOS. It’s there, we have patches to enable it, and it’s used by thousands of us who know where to look and what to do to make it happen. Unlike the dock multitasking, which is Apple’s kludgy response to webOS, app folders are more a response to the fact that Apple wrote themselves into a corner with the UI. It’s a decent workaround, but nothing like the full reworking that the iPhone app launcher ("Springboard") desperately needed and still needs.
Then there’s the new Game Center app and framework, which if you had to ask me is one of the more impressive features developed for iPhone OS 4.0. Essentially, it’s like Xbox Live for the iPhone OS. It lets game developers easily add things like global leaderboards, set up unlockable achievements, and even perform match-making between players (presumably of the competitive variety and not the eHarmony type). This deals a blow to the porting of 3D games in their near-complete state to webOS. Obviously, this framework is going to be specific to iPhone OS devices and not something that could be easily duplicated on webOS. Potentially, that means any 3D games programmed for iPhone with Game Center in mind are going to find themselves with lesser feature sets on webOS. Until webOS manages to obtain a critical mass userbase to justify the development of similar features, webOS games are poised to fall behind just as soon as they’d caught up.
The other impressive addition is without a doubt iAd. It’s Apple’s full-on assault on the mobile advertising market, so long as the mobile advertising market you’re talking about is the iPhone. Currently, as with 99.999% of desktop ads, tapping on an ad in a mobile app will send you to your web browser (that’s a major problem for ads in iPhone apps, as you instantly closed the app). iAd seeks to rectify that by creating immersive and interactive mini-app advertisements that pop up over the running app. Apple coded up and demoed a few different iAd packages for Toy Story 3, Nike, and Target, and as I said at the beginning of this paragraph, it’s impressive stuff.
iAd ads (rolls of the tongue like molasses) will be hosted by Apple, with 60% of the revenues going to developers. Which means that Apple gets to keep the other 40%. What remains to be seen is how well iAds are going to catch on with advertisers. Essentially, they’re going to find themselves having to a whole ‘nother app, and in HTML5 at that instead of Objective C as they’re used to for iPhone development. Of course, being on webOS we do like HTML 5, so there’s no reason that iAd ads couldn’t be adapted to work on webOS. Except that Palm would also have to provide support for hosting and distributing these ads.
Let’s recap: multitasking, mail enhancements, folders, Game Center, and iAds. Two impressive, and three worthy of “meh” reactions from webOS users (and exalted “Finally!”s from iPhone owners). What of the other three new tentpole features? There’s iBooks, which is nice and all and entirely expected after the iPad, but there are several worthy competitors (Kindle and Barnes and Noble, just to name two) - all we need is for one of them to actually develop webOS version of their app, which is only a matter of time and, more importantly, marketshare.
Apple has also bumped up their enterprise support, tacking on the aforementioned multiple Exchange account support and support for Exchange Server 2010, both things that webOS has supported since launching in June 2009. Where Apple has upped the ante, however, is remote management. Corporate IT admins will be able to remotely deploy apps, enforce better data protection, and manage devices wirelessly.
So there you have it, the major features of iPhone OS 4.0, in several nutshells. I’ve gone a bit in depth here, but it was necessary for a proper compare-and-contrast session with webOS. Apple’s found themselves playing catch-up for the first time since revealing the iPhone more than three years ago, and it shows. The way that multitasking applications are going to be handled in iPhone OS 4.0 also is very telling of the limitations imposed by the user interface constraints of iPhone OS 1.0. Workarounds like the multitasking dock and folders are indicative of the predicament Apple finds itself in now, with open up-and-comers like Android and webOS threatening to out-innovate the innovator.
Oh, and you can change the home screen wallpaper now. Exciting times, eh?
155 Comments
WebOS has a locked.First? Hhhmmm!
iDON'T care.
HAHA! haven't laughed that hard in a while.
Apple has all the apps to make multitasking great, Palm have multitasking which can make the apps work great.
Not yet. When this thing is released, only apps whose developers actually modify their apps to support it will have any of apple's 7 supported multitasking use cases. If the app isn't updated, it won't do it.
Apple has lots of apps, none of which currently support multitasking. And I suspect most of which won't after this is released.
You don't actually believe what you typed, correct? Stop spreading FUD. Developers will be quick to update apps. If they don't, their apps will no longer be relevant and will fade away (as they should).
Look at how quickly the iPad app are being released. Developers are quick to develop/update for Apple's iProducts.
What more that "the seven processes" does there need to be? Chat? constantly polling a server and draining battery? No thanks. The chat clients can effectively use notifications outside of the app itself.
>Look at how quickly the iPad app are being released. Developers are quick to develop/update for Apple's iProducts.
Unlikely, to be true. It's a highly awkward model at best. Again, it's non-developers that think they know something about these kind of things when they don't. It'll make the code way more complicated and therefore much more difficult to develop for unlike other more traditional programming platforms.
With this model, you're guaranteed to have none of those traditional games that you'd like to play, that uses Open GL, will be able to work with multitasking given how they are written currently. What will happen is folks will get frustrated with this half assed facility and demand the real thing, by then it'll be too late. Your code is going to be jumbled.
On my Pre, I can run Quake, Doom and a number of other things and not have to worry if the app was written specifically for multitasking or not. It makes for portability across platforms, Android, Pre and Linux pretty smooth.
It's going to be hard for the iPhone folks to compete with that given how locked-in to this insane programming model they've chosen to champion.
Remember the rule: Any feature is useless and you'd be a fool to even mention it until Apple has it, and then it's indispensable and a perfect reason to pay Apple for a new phone.
3G - check. MMS - check. Limited multitasking - check.
"you will be able to use one of the App Stores GPS solutions running in background (with voice prompts = like demoed) all while listening to Pandora. A call comes in and Pandora is muted but continues to run along with the GPS."
The above isn't multitasking?
You might be right that this will be a short lived problem. But you might be wrong, too. Depends on how easy that API is to fit into existing apps. As Jayne Cobb says, "I smell a lot 'if' coming off this plan."
In the mean time, android and webos support multitasking with an API so magical that you don't even need to invoke it for it to happen.
And of course some apps will either need multitasking/non multitasking versions or internal logic that chooses whether to use multitasking if multitasking is desirable but not mandatory for an app...
I like the ability to drag one app into another app to create a folder of apps. I wish webos had that. If you think about it it's really a smart idea. Your main apps page can just be folders and you don't have to slide between pages to find your app. (Although i just start typing away to bring up the app i want)
Smart? Replacing a swipe with a double click? One of the things I like about WebOS is it doesn't have the clicking-on-folders garbage - one swipe and I can see exactly what's there.
I'd agree with Dieter though - add/delete pages as a base feature is well overdue. They would need some work to make it safer but otherwise it's great.
Sounds like a fail to me on iphone. Palm pre is still move useable and far more user freindly
Kinda bothers me that Jon Rubinstein once said "I have never used an iPhone." You would think as the CEO you would want to know your competitors very well. Sorry to say but i think it made himself and the company look really bad when he said that he's never used an iPhone. Also bothers me that he said "Android is more for tech geeks." I consider myself a tech geek. Does that mean I should return my Palm pre and go get an Android phone Jon?
yep! If he had never used an iphone,that doesn't mean he haven't heard about things that can be done on it. Shoot,i've never use one myself,but I see how it works though. I applaude him for his honesty. Appel need to be honest and admit that palm beat them to the nicer multitasking.
No. Because i firmly believe Palm Pre is "for tech geeks". Notice how many articles come here about developer stuff, sdks? Notice how many of the posters here often parrot the the mantra of be patient, wait for a year, it's a new platform, and other early adopter stuff? Regular consumers don't care about that stuff. they bought a phone for 2 years so they want it to work now. They aren't interested in sdks or waiting for a platform to grow they want it to deliver for the length of their contract. They aren't worried about "open source" or how "open" a platform is in the specifics. nOt saying they don't get mad if apple says you can't have googlevoice but honestly most people don't use google voice so there is a tech geekyness to that.
See i'm NOT a tech geek. I don't care about SDKs, or novelty apps. i only care for the most part about mainstream apps. I don't really care about multitasking. i want cool apps and a cool camera and a great music player and something that checks my email and lets me text. I couldn't care less about philosophical crusades of flash vs html5. i know what they are, well slightly, but i just want a knbr 680 radio station that uses flash to play. i don't care about standards. And i think WebOS is very much a tech geek phone. Android by contrast i think started that way but with it's adoption onto 30 or 40 different phones and every network it's now much more mainstream. I just saw a post on a friends facebook page about how his wife just bought and android phone and wanted others to help her. point though is she is far from a tech geek. So i think you're safe with webos. The bad thing though is the overwhelming majority of smartphone users are not tech geeks and thus a tech geek product that is overly utilitarian or is at the expense of elegance and functionality does not appeal to them. There IS an elegance to webos but i think where it loses is in the whole package of apps, and media, it was late to the game with video recording and facebook. And those are where you need to deliver to the non "tech geek" that just wants to take pictures and text and use facebook.
my two cents.
Well, you'd be taking pictures, sending email and texting in a crippled half-asses manner :)
Obviously you've never seen or worked with the platform otherwise you wouldn't be say that kind of stuff.
"the platform"
Which one?
i've worked with all three platforms, webos, android, and iphone (and i saw a long video of multitasking on the iphone) and i currently use a Pre so i understand enough.
The one that superior of course :)
Don't buy that troll bait of mine please. I'm talking about the WebOS of course, one of the converted.
A good response. You've given me much to think about...
I don't really care about multitasking. i want cool apps and a cool camera and a great music player and something that checks my email and lets me text.
No, of course not. What I hear you saying is that you care about what the phone can *DO*. And multitasking is one of the things that, even after iPhone OS4 comes out, will prevent its users from being able to do things that WebOS users take for granted.
You're right not to care about the technology and focus only on what that technology can do for you. But even if you focus only on what technology can DO for you, you're still going to be missing out.
"I don't really care about multitasking. i want cool apps and a cool camera and a great music player and something that checks my email and lets me text.
No, of course not. What I hear you saying is that you care about what the phone can *DO*. "
not really sure why you say "No, of course not." i wasn't posing a question. Maybe you were agreeing with me. Not really sure. It sort of reads both ways. That being said. i'm not talking about "what a phone can do" in the vague way your saying. I'm talking about Those specific things, take pictures, email, music player, apps, and a few other unmentioned ones. True multitasking is one of the things it can do but it's not one of the things that is high on my list of priorities just like the ability to record video, navigation, twitter, geotagging and a whole bunch of other things.
rarely am do i ever have two apps open. And even then it like, take a picture and email it. At most i'd like to play music while i use the phone to send a text or something like check email and i believe the iphone can already do that before this multitasking. And again, that's rare.
It's not that its not useful. it's just not remotely my biggest concern. And you're being to broad by characterizing me as not focusing on technology and focusing on what it can do. I'm only really concerned about very specific things my phone can do and multitasking is not that high on my list. And i'm not missing out as i don't need it. and were i to have an iphone i wouldn't be missing out if their method of multitasking still accomplishes the goal of playing music while i can send a text.
The iPhone was very late to the table with video and a slew of other features as well. It wasn't initially successful because it was groundbreaking in it's feature set. The main reason the original sold so well was because of the Apple effect. Marketing, mythos, whatever. I dare anyone to say with a straight face that the original iPhone was a good bargain feature-wise or groundbreaking in any way other than UI (which don't get me wrong, IS important). Apple is VERY good at selling its wares...and for them, there's nothing wrong with that. The Pre had video recording far earlier in it's life cycle than the iPhone did, and the ancient Treo's (and most everything else) of the time had it for years before the iPhone even came out. You couldn't even DEVELOP for the iPhone until what...2yrs after it first came out? The Pre also had the ability to directly access the FULL facebook site from day one, so that argument isn't really relevant. So, the non "tech geek" you speak of could pretty much do everything you're talking about and more since the day the Pre was released. It could do the rest within a year of its release. Comparable to the other major OS's out there.
Your point that multitasking isn't important to you (and I'm sure some others) is certainly valid. But your assertion that everyone who isn't a "tech geek" would feel as you do isn't. The biggest (not only) advantage the current iPhone has over the Pre has nothing to do with the hardware at all, its the sheer number of apps available. One of the biggest advantages the Pre has over the other OS's is actually its *ease* of use. Type just one letter into your keyboard at any time you're not in an app, and a list of contacts, apps, AND web-related options will pop up. Continue typing and your choices narrow. On no other platform is it so easy to get around so quickly. Wifi, bt, cellular radios? All available from a single swipe at any time. Toss true multitasking in with that, and you have a platform that allows you to quickly find things, and then quickly jump between them without having to worry about closing out the last thing. That all sounds very useful to the non "tech geek" to me. Even if the reasons aren't obvious to them.
And so you know that I'm not biased, I seriously considered the iPhone in its latest iteration. AT&T's rate plans were the only thing that kept me away. I'm also highly likely to try out the HTC 4G when it comes out on Sprint because the feature set is so compelling (despite the fact that I prefer the WebOS interface over Android).
Reading this comment kind of makes me put it in to this type of perspective of a *BSD user.
Android Phones = NetBSD
iPhone = OpenBSD (Loosely based)
Palm WebOS based phones = FreeBSD
With android phones, it's like NetBSD. It's been ported to many applications. each one works well for each device it's ported to, but there can be some issues. most aren't that big of a deal. Just like NetBSD.
with iPhones, it's like security. It's all about how secure the device is for programs. OpenBSD was based with security in mind, and for apple, who is a closed-source company, this fits rather well.
With WebOS based phones, it's like FreeBSD. It's super stable. And it's dependable. It just works. The updates are good, the source is open, and it's mostly easy to write for. But it's limited reach doesn't give it the push it needs. Just like FreeBSD has been riding on the coattales of Linux for a long time, so will WebOS to Apple's iPhone OS. Even though the WebOS can do more, it doesn't have the spotlight, so it's not gonna be seen to shine.. but the people who do find it will say that it's the best thing and won't want to use any of the others. Just like FreeBSD.
Interesting analogy, eh?
i have to disagree, given the background info we have/dont have re; ruby's experience with other compet. phones, about the need to use an iphone to see his competition. there are so many phone platforms to study that if i had to choose to leave one out for time/financial reasons i'd pick the iphone to leave out. its so similar to the mac computers and ipods that it really doesn't need much imagination to calculate the reasons of it's success right? its pretty. its apple. its an ipod that makes calls and runs safari like the macs do.
i think maybe he was making the "i've never used an...." statement as meaning either he's very loyal to palm or he just wasn't that impressed with pretty to go to the trouble.
also, not knowing the iphone like a starstruck teen would, i believe it helped make webos so completely different/innovative/new. a clear brain is free to create from the imagination rather than from its memory store of someone else's creations that end up looking like copycat velvet paintings.
ive never used an iphone either. but i've had many macs since 1989 and many ipods since....whenever they came out years ago. i know exactly how the iphone will look, feel, and operate because of the familiar apple touches it obviously has. i dont need to go sign up for an ATT uberbuck billing plan to learn know this product. its in my blood already.
as for the android comment, its an observation/opinion from a free speaking american. doesnt mean its true or false and it wasnt an order for all the tech geeks to obey. just marketing speak.
thats my half-penny rant for the day. maybe...... but no hard feelings janter, ok?
peace for the Pre-ple
Folders might be a nice option on Web OS. I just can't wrap my mind around how Apple does multitasking though. Looks really clunky.
folders for iphone 4.0 is nice, as it gives an easier way to access grouped or most used apps without flicking through ten pages to get to them. webos could do better/similar by having the main icons be used as a folder function, hold your finger over one of them for one second and then it expands to a whole page of icons/apps. the quick launch bar could incorporate this as well, who's to say that you should only have five icons on the quick launch bar/function? a lot of potential to combat accessibility issues. webos has a nice thing going for them because they've created a system of virtual actions that performs a virtual task. they've rid themselves of physical buttons and the limitations they offer. before, user interface used to be centered around what we see, and what we want our hands to type or to click with a mouse/stylus, some form of instrument. now that we have portability in the form of a mobile computing device that can respond to touch, this has opened up a huge grazing ground for new input technologies that have to do with the fingers and fingertips. and then apple goes and makes you double-click a button every time you want to conjure multi-tasking. a bit behind and primitive, given the times.
Universal search is Waaaay better on Web OS.
first.(meh.)
I just can't understand why the webos isn't catching on. It is far better than any other out there. It kicks butt to all the other phone interfaces out there today.
You're not even close to first!
LOL!
they still dont have synergy type services for free! :D
... and Apple's server farm isn't in Mumbai, India.
"It
With the quality of apps in the App Catalog, I don't think I want to have 2 or more of them running at the same time.
Nicely laid out,i feel very proud to own such a device as palm pre. Hoping in the future there would be more exciting things happening for palm.
Well,the only realtime in-your-face multi-tasking is, the Pre.The cards view is..the best, no competition.I mean, loading up RadioTime,Tweed,Email,the web,Facebook,right infront of you,is surreal.Iphone 4.0 has,some kind of muti-tasking like every others OS,but not as efficient & elegant as webOS.I have to say..i'm staying with Palm,all the way.I'm not a fanboy,but just appreciate good innovators.
and yes, when you do all those things, your phone will last half a day. pre owners will not disagree with me.
the pre can multi-task, true, but if the battery and the processor cannot exploit all the goodness in that, why is this a positive point? multi-tasking is currently a hinderance to the pre. what the pre needs in order to make it matter is solidity on every front.
my battery lasts all day even if i have pandora running and sprint navi for hours thru the truck stereo.
once the preware and patches get caught up with each os update it settles into the longer life mode. and the daily preset-reset is good for tackling the minor errors and glitches of corrupt files so the pre can have a clear brain once again and operate at a much higher performance ratio.
sometimes i go thru the launcher and delete demo or beta apps that i dont really need but just wanted to have because i COULD and they were FREE and find better performance after the reset.
we have to remember that even if all the great apps, that were created by this community, ran perfectly each time we launched them they are still beta/developer test apps and when we install 20 new apps in one day because they are new, free, and exciting to explore, then there's a huge risk of conflict and corrupting of files.
i am insanely guilty of this app hoarding and need reminding that its best to try one at a time and take it slow. we are blessed with so much positive activity and ever increasing perfection in this journey that i find it hard to restain myself.
i bet im not the only one with this monkey on my back right?
Back when I had an iPhone and the App Store first came out I had this same "disorder". I would buy BS apps all the time because I just wanted to try something new but I got burned so many times by shitty apps that I rarely buy apps from the App catalog unless I know it's a high quality app or if the reviews are exceptional.
How about this, "welcome to the future" fellow Pre users...here's the iPhone and it doesn't feel like a pile of junk, it doesn't wobble like a jelly, the battery lasts longer than 6 hours, apps don't take about 10 seconds to launch (in 2010?)and get this...people actually like it. Yes I'm being sarcastic and don't give me too much jip as I have both, a Pre and an iPhone and I also even have an HTC Legend. The best of both (three actually) worlds. Oddly, I like the web OS set up best but to give the impression that it is streets ahead of the iPhone OS is frankly silly, it may on paper be a bit ahead now but you can bet your bottom dollar that it is going to be way behind come July this year. And besides, there is more to a compelling smartphone than just an OS that multitasks....solid, reliable hardware for example is something that Palm has for some reason chosen to ignore for a number of years now yet has always been ranked highly by their end users, Joe Public.
I really like my Pre but I don't like the way it feels like it is going to fall apart and that the battery now lasts about 5 hours on minimal use after the 1.4 update...."features" that render multitasking and enhanced mail folders suddenly seem less relevant.
"there is more to a compelling smartphone than just an OS that multitasks"
a point lost on a lot of people.
Well you're right - the construction and battery life of the Pre definitely aren't selling points.
That said, WebOS is what's great about the current generation of Palm products, and it's without question the best mobile OS around.
As for the hardware, if a slightly less than rock solid build is the price I have to pay for a hardware keyboard, I'll gladly pay it. That said, I'm confident that the Pre mk2, provided Palm is around long enough to build it, will address the construction issues.
In the mean time we have the awesome 800MHz kernel to close the gap, and other nice tricks like true hardware GPS which improve on the device further.
battery life isn't a selling point on ANY high powered smartphone. I have friends with iPhones and Droids and they all complain about battery life. For the early boosters of the EVO 4G, all I can say is, good luck with THAT battery. I'm not hating on the EVO, just saying that any high powered device is going to suck up juice fast, there just haven't been the appropriate advances in battery tech to keep up with the smartphones.
i-phone is getting close to all the things cell phone do. Hardware wise, rest of the phones are catching up. UI wise everyone has there preference and feels theirs best. I bet w iphone 4.0 less and less people will leave i phone for other phones.
I have to disagree with this. First, iPhone doesn't really do multitasking. It allows for 7 pre-defined ways in which an application can make use of already running services. There are two major problems that I see with this approach:
Apps must be reprogrammed to take advantage of one of these 7 approaches. So what you'll end up seeing is some apps that support one of those 7 services and (at first) most that don't. Which is exactly what beta testers are seeing right now. No apps other than Settings supports any of the new forms of multitasking. (And of course the Music app which already supported it.)
If there's some form of multitasking that a developer imagines that is *not* part of those anointed 7, then it can't be done. This will lead to things like SSH clients (that already exist for iPhone and iPad) that won't work in the background. Imagine using your iPad remotely manage a server via SSH, but then having to reauthenticate your SSH session every time you want to check email!
Now, apple may very well implement new APIs that make this available. But their habit of only releasing new features every year is going to hurt them. Moreover, even if developers adopt these API's quickly, you're still going to have fragmentation between those apps that support multitasking and those that don't!
I think it would be trivial to make an ad that exploits these differences and shows how WebOS does it right. The tag line: WebOS multitasks every app, by default, no reprogramming necessary. Is there an app for THAT?
i think you've touched on a very important point, that what 4.0 does relies on the specific app requesting a service, and the UI carrying out that service.
Without the developers to make this happen [using Apple's methods and no one else's] there would be less to boast about. But as always, money is where the heart is, in Apple's and the developers' minds...
Here's a telling demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_Wz1nxOz6Q
If I had to grade iPhone's new multitasking capability, 0 being none at all and 10 being Palm WebOS where the pure elegance and intuitiveness of the multitasking is at the heart of the OS, I would give iPhone 4.0... well, a 4.0.
I agree, but your average consumer can care less, as long as multitasking is there in some form.
I agree also, but still, without developers, the average consumer wont matter because they wont buy your phone.
it doesn't matter what you, or I, or anyone else thinks. the only thing that matters is what steve jobs thinks. because that is all the world listens to these days. people are blinded by "apple" and it's products as if there could be no better. steve jobs announces multitasking and the media covers it like a swarm of bees, most not even knowing what they're talking about, even though it was already introduced to the world many moons ago (palm pre, android, etc). he might as well say that iphone 5.0 will have a usb charger port and the whole world will oooooh and aaaaaaaah as if it never existed before
unfortunately that doesn't apply to Apple :/
Anything they do is looked at as amazing even when its crap or crippled.
In *some* ways, the Apple way of multitasking can be superior. Restricting it like that would ideally help keep the application in the forefront running smoothly even as stuff happens in the back.
webOS has the issue of the application running in the forefront bogging down a lot while something else is working. I'll be playing the Helicopter game (normally runs silk smooth) and it'll start getting really laggy, but that's because I'm getting an incoming MMS or something like that.
That said, I still prefer the webOS method by far. :) I'm surprised Apple didn't mention a new notification system though!
Local notifications - Your app can now alert users of scheduled events and alarms in the background, no servers required.
http://developer.apple.com/technologies/iphone/whats-new.html#tools
Local notifications are a new way to generate notifications - not handle them. They're still modal pop-ups.
The only (sanctioned) "beta testers" out there are developers that have the beta on which they test their apps. If a developer is out there expecting to multitask an app that is in current release on the app store, then that developer is an idiot. The beta is out there for developers to test their updated app's usage of the new capabilities.
I would love to know which beta testers you are hearing from that are disappointed in the number of current releases that don't multitask. A list should be made so folks can avoid that developer's apps.
Where did I say that the beta testers are frustrated by this? Just that they're seeing it. Of course they expect it.
My point is that it's going to be a problem after release, too. When all applications have not been ported to support what apple calls multitasking.
I would rather have Apple's multitasking method than have my phone do TRUE multitasking and eventually slow down to a crawl. Apple decided to do this type of semi-TRUE multitasking to preserve battery life and maintain performance. If TRUE multitasking was a killer feature, how come it didn't made WinMo and WebOS the success that they deserve? User experience (plus apps) is the key.
"I would rather have Apple's multitasking method than have my phone do TRUE multitasking and eventually slow down to a crawl."
So, you'd rather have an iPhone than a mythical bad thing? You've made a great choice.
Let's ask all those WinMo, Blackberry, hey even Palm users (out of memory for cards anyone?) if having too many open apps have no effect on performance or stability. Its amazing how some people think everything works by magic, do you not realize that every single application uses resources?? it's not that hard to understand that resources need to be divided amongst every single app that is running, the more new apps you launch, the less available resources for each one, until you get to a point where apps start crashing. Really, not that hard...
I'm one of those users you're talking about and your argument doesn't hold water. Just as there's no real practical reason to have this type of device be capable of storing 2000 apps, it makes no sense to have the ability to have an unlimited number of apps open (though headroom is nice). I multitask on my Pre DOZENS of time a day because of the way I work and play. I NEVER get "too many cards open" warnings cause I never have too many cards open. However, having *enough* open DOES boost my productivity and allow me to access different sources of information while saving time doing so. Sure there's power and resource penalties if you abuse that capability, but at least the *option* is there.
My response was aimed at the previous "mythical" comment, it implies that there are no trade-offs, which is completely untrue. There is nothing mythical about each new application that you open up needing and using resources.
As for your comment about having the "option" to multitask, I am not against multitasking, what I am against is having multitasking make my phone feel slow and unstable. The fact is that the more things you do at once, the slower everything will feel. Apple wants and tries to make the phone feel smooth when your average user starts using it, as opposed to a WinMo OS or Blackberry, and yes, even Palm, where you need to keep in mind how many things are open when trying to figure out why things are starting to slow down. If you really dont mind that trade off, and many people dont, then you will see the iPhone's current "limitations" as negative (which by the way is something that will change in a couple months). I, on the other hand, enjoy having my phone just flow without thinking about it too much. You and I might have different priorities when it comes to deciding what makes an OS a "good" OS.
I hope you're not implying that one cannot be "productive" when using an iPhone, because that would also be untrue.
And that is my point. My Pre flows just fine without any thought and it is/feels far from "unstable". You make it sound as though ANY multitasking at all creates an instant, noticeable drop in performance...and that's just not the case. You also make it sound as though iPhones don't lock up, overheat, or have any slow downs. I know this isn't true because I witnessed it just yesterday at a happy hour. Yes, more tasks require more resources. And if you open a bunch of resource hungry apps at once, you'll run into some lag. If you don't, you won't. It doesn't require heavy thought in the moment to know this. Most people naturally know that doing their taxes while driving requires more thought process than they can devote. It doesn't require one to think about whether it's a good idea. Nor did I say the iPhone approach is a negative. In fact, as a few actual programmers have mentioned on this post, I feel combining both techniques would be the best way to go.
I'm also not implying that an iPhone cannot be productive. What I AM saying is that usually I can be accomplish any generic task faster than anybody I know with an iPhone (and that's a LOT of people) easily 7 out of 10 times. That's not to imply that the Pre doesn't have plenty of flaws. What doesn't? I'm just saying that, in this aspect, it's better (not perfect) to have the option of choosing how many apps you have open than it is to remove the choice entirely. Closing a card takes less than a second.
Actually, multi-threading on Palm OS 5 is better then iPhone OS 4 once you started playing with DAs.
I loved how I could select a section of text in a webpage, copy it with two strokes on the Graffiti area, call up DA notepad, paste it, and continue reading the same webpage.
The way Apple made it is more like a bad copy of the Android "recently used app list" that you call up by a long press on the home button. Yup, Android's method takes less steps then Apple.
Anyhow, this is no time for Palm to pat themselves on the back. They should purge the retail pipelines of defective devices and get more people to know of their existence. Yesterday a friend told me excitedly "I got a Pre Plus", I asked him if he got the keypad double-typing issue. He replied "Yes". As much as I feel my Sprint Pre is almost perfect, I don't know what to suggest to this friend on Verizon.
the 'multi-tasking' mentioned above is not a complete success, but it is apple's approach, which is: making something work and make it work great. palm's approach to multitasking is: say you can and hopefully the hardware will know what to do with it. while i do praise palm's interface and multitasking capabilities, i am still left with a lukewarm feeling, just as i am was hearing about the mtasking in iphone 4.0. they each have their strengths, and they also each have their weaknesses. the important thing here is they now have the opportunity to make a better reiteration, a better package than the one currently on the market.
in terms of volume, palm is left speechless because it doesnt not have the userbase the others have. and when you introduce the 'apps' ecosystem into a device originally thought just to remain a phone, it's a totally different ballgame and you find that it's awfully tough to keep up with, as fast as things are moving now and as fast as companies like htc keep pumping out products that have features down to the floor.
the next generation iphone, when it finally comes out sometime this year, will add another huge proverbial wrench into the gears of not just palm, but the bberry and google as well. it's an evolving market and we have gone from monkeys to robots in a matter of seconds.
i honestly believe that palm has one more opportunity to release a product that delivers on all fronts, 99% perfect. if it does not meet the needs of existing palm users and if it doesnt attract potential suitors, that's it.
Agree with your post 100%. Spot on..... including your prediction. Let's hope Palm knows what they're doing the second time around... marketing included.
"when you introduce the 'apps' ecosystem into a device originally thought just to remain a phone, it's a totally different ballgame and you find that it's awfully tough to keep up with"
I don't understand your point? The iPhone was just a Feature Phone for the first year, then they decided it was a smart phone.
why would it matter if it's classified as a feature phone/smart phone or not? i was stating that apple pioneered the apps game, and has been dominating it ever since. what if the idea of apps never came into fruition, would the iphone be as popular as it is now?
the answer is no.
Actually, Palm pioneered the apps game. There were tens of thousands of apps available for multiple generations of Treos years before the iPhone. And you weren't locked into getting them from one source. Apple pioneered the app *store*, streamlined the way you got said apps onto your device, and made them cheap enough to be impulse buys. Less freedom, but easier to do. Apple was wildly successful because they sold a butt-ton of devices to support the sale of said apps (before and after apps were available). They also did a FAR better job than anyone before (I'm looking @ you, Microsoft) of leveraging of their entire ecosystem to make the device and apps successful.
I think the cultural relevance of the word 'app' originated squarely when Apple started it. Palm didn't pioneer apps, they sold programs/software, just like everyone else. I believe there is a difference. So is the reason why the Blackberry and Palm app marketplaces are called App World and App Catalog, respectively, that "appened" after the App Store. That's certainly no mystery.
And yes, Apple, did do it right, better than everyone, and that's still the case today.
I have a feeling Palm will be introducing their new hardware the weekend before Apple announce theirs.
I think if people knew the next-generation iPhone was arriving a week later from the next-generation Palm device's launch, they would just wait it out. It has to be sooner, which is funny because the next-generation iPhone is rumored to be this summer (i.e. June)
Besides not caring since I know I have a far superior phone in terms of Software, most iPhone users don't feel like their beloved phone is playing catch-up. They keep living the fantasy that their phone is in the future and other devices are playing catch-up.
That's at least what the media makes it seem like. And nice, changing your wallpaper, there's some innovation Apple.
that wallpaper thing, they got the wrooong idea. while it works fine on the ipad, i can't imagine it being bearable/legible/not annoying on a screen that is denser, with the apps filling a larger % of the screen compared to the ipad. silly apples!
You're right. When I had my iPhone and jailbroke it, the wallpaper feature that came with Summerboard and Winterboard were useless unless you had a theme that had transparent'ish icons.
I don't think they have the wrong idea .. Apple knows the drawback you mention (as do I). The users have asked for wall paper and Apple is providing wallpaper outside of the Lock Screen.
I didn't know our browser supports HTML 5. Yay!
Pre's bubble should say : "LOL WUT you call that multitasking?"
makes me want an iphone :D jk
Wow, talk about a lot of misinformation and this is the second time from the front page as well.
So the iPhone is NOT(?) multitasking when you will be able to use one of the App Stores GPS solutions running in background (with voice prompts = like demoed) all while listening to Pandora. A call comes in and Pandora is muted but continues to run along with the GPS.
Apple has done exactly what everyone else should have done. It's easy to write programs that run under linux/BSD/Unix at the same time. It is NOT so easy to run them without conflict.
Many Pre users complain about battery-life, music hiccups, no more cards, etc. No hobbyist will usually write a music player (I'm not talking about the GUI) that is more efficient than the iPod - so now it's a service. Likewise for the data connection.
Even MicroSoft knows the correct direction to head with these services (or Hubs in MS speak). They've tried to copy Apples playbook.
This is a difference of night and day compared to WebOS, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, etc.
And Palm will not be able to compete. They are too small. They don't have the resources. They are fighting for survival. End of story.
it's pretty sad that someone would come to a news site for a phone they have not bought to defend a phone they have... It's a phone, omg. Why do you care, omg.
please, someone put out an app in the iphone's app store: the iTissue and the iNeedToGetALife...
What's sad, Jimbo, is that 'get off our lawn' argument when you have no knowledge of what phone I may have.
(Hint, I've got 2 Treo 755p to sell you).
No, you have no better argument than that. Another hint, fanbois flock to Palm defense. Never to debate the merits of the tech.
I'm sorry if your stock portfolio (or pride) is hurt while watching palm fade into the sunset.
(P.S. - this is anything but a 'news' site)
They already have the iPad for that...
geez, can you imagine how many times you are going to click that little button during the course of just one day? talk about not being able to get away from the function and simple physicality of a button.
A botton? A repeating swipe on a plastic screen? What does it matter?
just as it mattered when we were all using prehistoric keyboards to do all our inputting, it was always important to keep the keystrokes down. well, not much as changed.
one swipe versus two presses of a button, added up throughout the day, the month the year, which will matter more. of course it doesn't seem like a big deal now, but think about it in real world situations, day after day after day. swipes are practically invisible, button presses require force, pressure.
days of inputting are changing my friend, buttons will be gone soon.
button pushing, tapping, swiping, or keystroking only matters to the specialist who will get to treat us for whatever repetitive motion injury we sustain from our input choice.
other than that.....who cares.
BUT I STILL REALLY WANT MY BT KEYBOARDS FROM PALM OS TO WORK ON WEB OS SO I CAN TRAVEL LIGHT AND WRITE FICTION OR BLOG (OR REPLY TO NEVER-ENDING PRECENTRAL FORUM COMMENTS LIKE A MAD FREAK BECAUSE I'M HOOK ON THE MOJO-MONKEY) ON THE GO.
when are we going to finally set up the 12-step detox program we need? i dont really want to detox from this high. its ruining my life but so was cleaning the house and feeding the kids so........
Oh, you'll see. Seems shockingly obvious to those of us who are not trolls.
troll seems to be a big buzzword now. kudos.
As much as I love my Pre Plus, I have to say there's a lot of truth to this.
From a developer standpoint, the WebOS solution is considerably more powerful. I can write whatever I want and leave it running in the background, doing all kinds of things. The iPhone solution seems anemic, when you look at it that way.
But the average non-techy end user isn't going to look at it that way.
They'll look at it as 'well, I can play Pandora in the background on both the iPhone and the Pre, and I can have both of them checking me in on Google Latitude (or some equivalent) while I do other things, /and/ I can get notifications from Facebook when friends send me things, AND I can have Skype running and take a call on Skype whether or not I'm in that app. But the iPhone has more battery left at the end of the day.'
They won't care that on the Pre, the entire client app is running in the background, whereas the iPhone one had to be rearchitected for all kinds of custom background goo using these more limited APIs. They'll just care that -- to their point of view -- they can 'multitask' on both, but the Pre runs out of battery much quicker.
WebOS is a kickass platform, but the ability to offload a lot of processing onto servers (a'la Apple Push Notification, or Palm's theoretical Mojo Messaging platform) so you don't need Facebook running /at all/ (much less constantly polling the network) in order to receive messages, to offload media handling to the OS and shut down all of your UI, etc... it /would/ help the battery life.
Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages, so ideally WebOS would adopt a combination of the various methods. Their existing multitasking capability for the apps that really need it (and the ability to flip between cards, and let the task in one finish while in another... very useful for the whole rebuilding-index portion of startup in Preware), the Mojo Messaging for server-based services that can just send notifications rather than require background polling, and APIs to allow offloading smaller tasks onto the OS (so that, for instance, some future Skype client for the Pre could handle calls in a more power- and memory-efficient manner). That would be the best of all worlds.
"...But the iPhone has more battery left at the end of the day."
And that is all that matters.
You hit the nail right on the head.
Joe-Sixpack does not care what you and I know. They simply want something that is reliable, fast and works well in their life.
Well, that's speculation at best whether it will have better battery life and it's probably wrong even though the Job's followers drink his particular brand of Koolaid.
It's more likely that bad apps are what causes severe battery drain. It doesn't matter if it's a background task or a "main" thread in an app, it's the interaction of that thread with the OS that is what determines it's battery behavior.
Again, most iPhone folks aren't developers so they make a lot of assumptions about things that are likely false. Folks believe it because they hear it over and over again.
All I can say is live out of the box. :)
mm, i doubt it's speculation. either your phone has good battery life (no matter what you do) or it doesnt. why do we have to make it about believing people? here, let me demonstrate...
Q: Do you have good battery life with your Pre?
Pre owner: No, I don't, it's horrible. I'll be lucky if at the end of a day I'll have more than 40% remaining. That's why I bought an extended battery so I can have peace of mind. Palm has yet to send me a check for that.
Q: Do you have good battery life with your multi-tasking iphone?
multi-tasking iphone owner: Yes, I do. Because Apple is thoughtful, they decided that no matter how I use my phone or what I do, they will provide me with a great, long-lasting product. they will test and test and test, making sure that what they are selling is true to what they believe in. yes, my iphone doesnt do 'true' multi-tasking, but i'd rather have a stellar battery life than the ability to boast about draining my Pre battery prematurely.
>yes, my iphone doesnt do 'true' multi-tasking, but i'd rather have a stellar battery life than the ability to boast about draining my Pre battery prematurely
Oh God, where do folks with little technical background like you come from ? It's not the threading mechanism that determines battery life, but how each thread of execution behaves in conjunction with the system.
My Pre gets perfectly acceptable battery life when it's not doing a lot, about 2-3 percent and hour even with heavy Jabber change when I'm connected to chat.facebook.com.
The battery claims are completely non-sense on the iPhone and 4.0. There's no profile information, the folks that talk about it aren't developers (I'll bet you on that), a whole list of things...
It's not the threading mechanism that determines battery life, but how each thread of execution behaves in conjunction with the system.
I appreciate your technical wizardry, but sadly in this day and age, it doesn't quite matter to the general pool of users, especially mobile users. they want performance, and that's all there is to it. And I don't even have to go as far as to make dubious claim of how iphone 4.0 will be [with the newly release iphone model, mind you], i can point you in the direction of the current iphone models. Listen, it's not about whether or not a phone can multi-task or not, it's about this mechanism and that behavior, when it comes down to it, the pre and the iphone are both CONSUMER products. they are meant to be consumed/used, and if the company making the phone cannot develop a product that will account for varying degrees of usage, and I'm talking about the simple things here, brightness of the screen, wi-fi, bluetooth, 3g, navigation, if i have to limit myself consciously to turn my brightness down, turn off my wifi, limit this, limit that, then that product has failed as being integral to my daily lifestyle. i don't abuse my pre, i'm not mean to it, i only ask of it what i need in a mobile device, and when it comes to battery life, it falls supremely short of it. and because i am a consumer and i paid for the phone (which is a PENNY on amazon now with a contract), i am able to say, no you did not deliver and there are other companies making it happen.
i can say it a thousand times, webos is the bomb, webos rocks, its the best out there, i am still holding a tangible object in my hand. and because palm didn't want to dedicate their attention into creating the appropriate battery technology to the holy multi-tasking ability, because they wanted to use the same battery thought process as their previous generation of product, the general pool of consumers suffers and contributes immensely to their lackluster marketing, carrier choice, blah blah blah.
i dont need a strong technical background.
Sorry for the insult, mistook your initial reply as being condescending.
Yeah, it's not multitasking that's causing any battery problems, it's the apps themselves and how unoptimized it is for that purpose. It would be a problem even if it was a background task on iPhone OS 4.0. One of the worst is the new Facebook app and their resource hogging. When I have updates on for that app, it just sucks up more and more memory to the point where I can't run anything else after a while of it just sitting around doing it's thing. I find that it makes the system 'try really' hard to reap memory objects just so that it can run apparently otherwise the app I try to launch and use fail.
The problem with the current batch of WebOS apps and WebOS itself, is that it's still buggy and the system is too young. Once those bugs are ironed out, either through traditional programming means or better tools, you'll see a more even use of the battery, same for the chat stuff. I connect to 3 different chat servers. The system just isn't that mature at this time, but compared to the other alternatives, Android and the iPhone, I'd much rather use this than those.
Maybe I'll get an iPad when their OS isn't so annoying because right now, it's the only thing, besides money, that's keeping me from getting one. The lack of strong multitasking is going to express itself on that platform via the inconsistency of which apps can restore it state and ones that can. This programming model sucks. It's going to be a heavy burden on the app programmer. WebOS however is much more 'normal', hence the easy of porting over programs from other Linux source repos. There's a lot of good free software in that community that's been under exploited.
That's all
Eh, I'll just say... as a mobile developer, I have two Android phones, a Pre Plus, and an iPhone 3GS. Even under 3.1.3, the 3GS has better battery life than my Pre Plus does. I love WebOS (in particular, the notifications on my Pre are SO MUCH better than the maddening 'HI I'M INTERRUPTING WHATEVER YOU'RE DOING!' popup notices on the iPhone) but I can't rely on my Pre to get me through the day without a top-off charge somewhere in the middle. I loaned my Pre to a Canadian friend who was traveling with me to PAX East earlier this year so that she had a US number to use while here in the US, and that was her biggest complaint: she had to watch herself carefully or the battery was gone by the end of a day.
The Droid and iPhone /will/ get me through the day, and it's worth noting that the Android multitasking design is closer to Apple's than Palm's, in terms of what it does with generic apps (and how you have to custom write a bunch of stuff to keep it going in the background). Developers (like me) may grumble about how they have to rearchitect things and think about all of this more carefully, but the end result will still be that the end-users will /feel/ as though they are multitasking, and still preserve a lot of battery life.
Really, the issue on the WebOS side is that they don't provide any way /other/ than just 'hi, you're running in the background!' to handle multitasking. Mojo Messaging will hopefully address at least some of that (imagine if you didn't have to leave BadKitty running in the background in order to get notices of Twitter mentions, or have the Facebook app polling Facebook to get notices of a reply to one of your status posts!).
Then we'd have the best of both worlds on WebOS.
am i the ONLY person in this forum that remembers the first 2yrs of iphone and all of the twitter updates about battery only lasting 3 hours and/or then the phone bricked and apple had to give many users a few new iphones because of these issues??????
uhhhhh new technology, pushed out at lightning speeds to sooth the savage tech beast hunger we all have acquired, has a year to three years of tweaking till its near perfect (and near obsolete) as a general pattern.
do we want to wait for years for perfection or live in the fast lane of bugs and heroic fixes and enjoy the journey of learning new things.
i prefer the latter. i want to play with the pre all day and all night and am constantly trolling the forums for new info and tips. i'm a junky and i like it that way.
if anyone thinks i'm exaggerating about the apple battery complaints of the last couple years i can assure you i'm not. i'm a first-wave podcast host/producer and i know most of the other first-wave podcasters. ipod was our chariot to the people. so nearly all the pod people i know jumped at the iphone when it came out. 20x, a day at least, i would hear or read of someone complaining. "i'm at the apple store again for my 3rd phone this week...."
so stop neigh-saying our great treasure. its way better, in the long run, than any other new tech phone to be marketed yet.
>but the end result will still be that the end-users will /feel/ as though they are multitasking, and still preserve a lot of battery life.
Yeah, but where do folks get support for that claim ? I don't see how something like regular thread on the Pre can't provide a full multitasking experience and not also provide good battery life.
The problem I've seen have nothing to do with multitasking but continual GC operations under memory exhaustion scenarios (one of the only major problems I have with WebOS) so that an app that's running can allocate a chunk of memory. There are other system issues that I suspect will contribute to battery life and performance as well such as the JITing of JavaScript by the v8 engine to do basic operations since it's non-native code.
Those are more core issues than what this Steve Jobs character claims about this mechanism's superiority.
And the Pre costs (at LEAST) $2000 less over the course of a two-year contract on Sprint. What matters to who, and how much, is a more complex puzzle than just that.
"And *blank* will not be able to compete. They are too small. They don't have the resources. They are fighting for survival. End of story."
That was Apple 10 years ago. Apple needed a bailout from Microsoft to stay afloat.
Well, you are correct. However, history doesn't have to repeat and there are still so many differences between these circumstances.
For example, today Palm simply 'shells' Linux. The same Linux that is the basis for all of those Android phones and that started with Openmoko. Close in function to the modified OSX that iPhone bases their mobile devices on.
Palm has a phone platform for a device (hardware) they most certainly didn't design (mobile chipset), on an OS they can't really own, support, or advance. And they continue to lose money.
Mistakes such as build quality have been more devastating; Software bugs more glaring.
This has occurred before. I followed Blackberry's Storm hoping it would be better. It wasn't. RIM is simply larger and can afford a couple of failures that Palm can't.
Palm has a fraction of the engineers Google, Apple, RIM and Microsoft can draw from. Motorola, HTC, Microsoft - now everyone has the social aspects promoted by WebOS. What is Palm left with? Easier switching between programs. That's the best anyone has been able to promote? Please. That won't work very well as an argument.
Soon, Apple will have sold almost 100 million iPhones and iPod touches. Those are fanbois or sheeple that purchase something like this (at full price mind you).
My sister and mother are both perfect examples. Both live in areas without 3G coverage, both now carry iPhones. They are non-technical people who enjoy their phones because they require no support, no maintenance, etc. Now Apple is about to make them better. What alternative can Palm offer? They are fighting for existence.
Yeah, but they are robots as well unable to see that there's something else out there than some half-baked OS that can't integrate with web services well. They're stuck in this box of what they think a device like this *can be* without knowing that Google and Facebook exist.
JavaScript is a second class citizen on the iPhone. WebOS can simply do more things in the fundamental OS than the iPhone. When I added Jabber to my system, I simply was able to integrate with the Synergy contact facilities on Web OS and have all of my Facebook chat users integrate into my contacts without having to manually link them as a core part of its function.
You simply can't do that on the iPhone with a simple extension and fanboys of that system are blind to thing like that.
"When I added Jabber to my system, I simply was able to integrate with the Synergy contact facilities on Web OS and have all of my Facebook chat users integrate into my contacts without having to manually link them as a core part of its function."
Because this is what normal people are looking to do with their smartphones.
and they got it. Will Palm get one too?
While the Palm webOS does not have a Kindle or B&N app, it does have the ebooks by Kobo (formerly called shortcovers) app.
The ebooks by Kobo does provide a relatively large collection of ebooks with comparative pricing as Amazon Kindle ebooks and with accessiblilty across varied platforms. I believe there's even news about their dedicated ebook reader and partnership with Borders.
Interestingly, the app hasn't gotten a lot attention by the general tech media and, even Palm-centric media.
You can check out the app in the app catalog (for free and with the usual collection of free books) or view their website:
I've been buying a lot of ebooks lately from Kobo and I really like them. I can download them to my ebook reader (which is not a Kindle, nook, nor Sony), read them on my PC, or read them on my Pre. Their app is nicely put together and looks great. And actually right now with the upheaval from the switch to the agency pricing model, Kobo has a better selection of books than anybody else. They had all their ducks in a row on April 1 and had very few bumps with the switchover.
Kobo is coming out with an eInk reader that has Bluetooth so you can sync it from your phone, for about $100 cheaper than the Kindle.
I use pReader for free public domain classics. It is a great little app with lots of customization.
I have to say I also love kobo. Of course with any ebook reader on a small screen, it is not ideal for reading an entire book on. One of the reasons I like kobo is that I can access my book from their website and pickup where I left off in the book.
I'm a big fan of WebOS, but lately the poor performance of some 3D games, and other applications has had me doubting the OS. I'm beginning to feel like there should be an option to devote more of the phone's resources to specific apps or something, and I've been doing a lot more restarts on my device since I've been able to purchase apps this month.
I was using the SPB TV app last night, and it froze my phone hard. After pulling the battery, the phone restarted, and ALL OF MY DOWNLOADED APPLICATIONS HAD BEEN DELETED. I re-downloaded them and everything seemed fine until I restarted the device again and it removed all reconfigurations I had made to the apps in the launcher. Since this is a new replacement phone, and I've been busy with school, I haven't bothered putting any homebrew on it yet, so my phone was pretty much vanilla.
To fix the problem with my phone, I needed to WebOS Doctor it, but plugging the phone into my computer, WebOS didn't recognize it, as it was apparently stable enough already. I had to do a couple of google searches before I could find the answers in this website's forum to put the phone into a state where it could be doctored. The phone is working fine now, but after having to reconfigure all my apps again, I'm feeling a pretty peeved at my phone.
When I first picked up this replacement, it hung during the upgrade to 1.4, so I had to doctor it then. Once again, neither time was there any homebrew anything on my device. No consumer device should require the kinds of restarts and reformats the Pre needs.
I'm on a 3-year contract in Canada, but if my phone breaks outside of warranty, I won't be hesitant to jump to the iPhone, true multitasking or not. As long as it means an improved user experience for running apps, I don't care, and that's pretty much the main draw for phones like these anyways.
at the end of the day, the average consumer/user just wants to say...
"oh. that's it?" its that simple?"
palm isn't there yet, apple invented it.
and then there's the small group of people who want to make their phone faster by downloading an iffy 800mhz patch, when the company providing the phone should have engineered it better in the first place.
it's just different companies in different places who are trying to reach the largest group of people.
"and then there's the small group of people who want to make their phone faster by downloading an iffy 800mhz patch, when the company providing the phone should have engineered it better in the first place."
How is this any different from the (relatively) small group of people who want to make their phone have more features by illicitly rooting their phone, when the company providing the phone should have provided these features in the first place?
"iffy" the overclocking patches are not; if you had seen the documentation and testing that had gone into making the patches safe, you wouldn't use the word iffy. Don't talk about things you have no clue about.
iffy means i cant charge my phone because it gets to hot while doing nothing less. how am i supposed to use the phone if i cant charge it while nothing is running? seems iffy to me.
i think apple could steal palm's card system get away with it!! there are a lot of people who still do not know what the pre or pixy can and will do and all they see is apple and blackberry.. i think the apple could effectively steal the card idea and make it there own and the general market would be none the wiser.
i'd have to admit, and this may be from my previous days as a crackberry user, but folders would be cool. but i just may have fond memories of it because of how the blackberry OS works.
Well iPhone at least you kind of multitasking, lolol hehe.
Palm please make the New Page Patch something that is standard. I love that patch along with many others (4x4 icons). This would help many Pre and Pixi owners get the most out of their phones!
I'll quote Fid, "you will be able to use one of the App Stores GPS solutions running in background (with voice prompts = like demoed) all while listening to Pandora. A call comes in and Pandora is muted but continues to run along with the GPS."
If that's not multitasking, I don't know what is. lolol hehe :))
If it's not draining your battery faster than a 10,000w car amp running with a factory battery and the engine not running, then no, it's not multitasking. LMAO!
The next iPhone will multitask (however efficiently or not) and a newer ad will claim they reinvented the wheel (again) and how revolutionary it is (again) and the media will fawn over it (again).
And tens of thousands of apps will be created for it (again).
>And tens of thousands of apps will be created for it (again).
...of shitty apps will have to rewritten for it again so that it'll support a crack smoking task model. Good luck with your contorted code and crappy app store that can't make up for the inadequate and dated OS.
Oh yea, my bad. I forgot that the App Catalog is full of TOP NOTCH apps. How silly of me.
Better then the Palm app store with camera fun and quotes from people nobody cares about.
apps matter and palm doesn't have many.
and no non tech geek really cares about 99% of the distinctions palm people make about HOW a phone multitasks. They aren't tech geeks. They don't care about tech geek stuff.
And until palm figures that out their phones will continue to appeal largely to the small niche of tech geeks.
As a fairly illiterate computer user and former iPhone user, I'm going to go ahead and disagree completely. The Pre is just a better phone as far as usability. Less apps, but I find the vast majority of apps to be completely pointless.
But keep on talking for us and making the same ignorant point over and over in this thread.
Right, I'm sure the average user won't care that IM can't run in the background while they're doing something else...
Unfortunately, Bill wasn't implying "that the App Catalog is full of TOP NOTCH apps."
So yes, you did indeed make yourself look most silly.
"And until palm figures that out their phones will continue to appeal largely to the small niche of tech geeks."
Unfortunately, it isn't apps or multitasking that will draw people to the iPhone; it is the fact that the (perceived) majority own an iPhone and that humans hate facing the ambiguity of being alone, of being different. The popularity of Apple devices strike a chord much lower than the superficial issues you mention.
seems to me apps is exactly what draws a ton of people. either way they sell palm doesn't.
Perhaps it's because you aren't looking at the big picture instead of focusing on superficial issues.
Human nature confirms what I said.
>Unfortunately, Bill wasn't implying "that the App Catalog is full of TOP NOTCH apps."
>So yes, you did indeed make yourself look most silly.
Correct. the only reason why I'd want to get a iPhone OS based system is to run apps that my friends have written. If I do, it's going to be an iPad without 3G. Yeah, Skype would be a good thing to have on WebOS as well as other things, but the overall WebOS system is unified and elegant.
I was able to get a Jabber plugin from the homebrew community, installed in my IM system and then automatically Synergy contact management was able to link the unique user hashes from Facebook's IM system directly into preexisting contacts with little effort.
WebOS is about being able to reach out to folks regardless of protocol in a single stream of communication. AIM, Gtalk, Facebook Chat, Yahoo chat, SMS, doesn't matter, it's all one unified stream and built into the OS.
That's why the Web OS system is so good, minus the critical and basic multitasking.
I don't normally bite into the OS wars thing, but this recent batch of geez wiz iPad and iPhone OS 4.0 this and that with blind fanboys you can't talk to is just a bit much for me. :)
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at least there WILL be a next iphone...
The bottom line is the Apple product will have superior battery life.
IMO, Palm did a lot of things right with the OS but multitasking isn't one of them. While its great, intuitive, etc, it doesn't help if it renders your device dead In under a day.
Sure, the multitasking is awesome, but if I have to be tethered to an AC outlet, sort of defeats the purpose of a "mobile" phone. (this is with an extended battery).
Additionally, without the over clocking patches, it makes the handset a lag ball.
Where WebOS got it right Is in the notifications. It's the best there is for unintrusive notifications.
Palm has a long way to go. Better, higher quality, and more powerful hardware would go a long way. At the end of the day, once you factor all of these enhancements to the iPhone OS, Apple will once again be the kings of user experience.
This will be my last WebOS device. It does some things that are incredible. However the major issue with battery life, the instability in the OS and the questionable outcome of recent events is having me look elsewhere.
Apple might be using faux multitasking but if it provides more battery life, better responsiveness from the handset and a good experience then well, they've nailed it.
wholeheartedly agreed.
I don't know that anyone has brought this up yet, but in my opinion the FREE Wifi Mobile Hot Spot trumps ANYTHING that the iPhone can do or will do!!! Even those who own the Sprint Pre, and like to brag about there all everything plan have NO argument when it comes to this feature! You take your $99 plan and add a 3G/4G air card, plus a mobile broadband connection plan for $59.99 and then tell me who's bill is cheaper.
What an atrocious example.
That's like saying the iPhone is superior to the Pre because it has Skype, potentially saving people who make overseas calls hundreds of dollars a month.
You are seriously comparing Skype to Mobile Wifi, and you call my example atrocious? LMAO!!! Now that is FUNNY!!
Your apparent inability to read is funnier.
Why would anyone but a road warrior have any need for Mobile Hotspot (even if it's free)?
I mean, most people have access to 3G (or WiFi) wherever they go, so the free tethering is just the cherry on top of a very, very, delicious sundae.
One feature a phone does not make.
Simple example. My wife and I sent away for a few days on a mini driving vacation and several of the hotels wanted $10/day to access their WiFi.
I didn't need to pay :). You don't need many of these in a month to make a Pre + sprint plan almost pay for itself.
Also checking email/doing facebook etc on the road, posting photos from real camera via laptop etc is a lot easier with a mobile hotspot around.
DSL/cable outage at home? No problem!
I find it quite sad that in today's world, people evaluate the validity of a purchase with the answer to the question:
"How many other people are using the device I use?"
or
"Is this 'cool' (or hip, or 'in', or whatever) or not?"
instead of thinking logically about what device will fit them the best.
Features and apps aren't what draw the majority to iPhones. It is the plain and simple fact that most humans absolutely loathe being the outcast, being the outlier amongst a sea of like products.
That's not a modern thing, it's how humans have always been, and will always be. Most are simply sheep most of the time,they do what they're told by government, preachers, parents, friends, government or Oprah without taking any time to think it through for themselves.
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So this really just boils down to marketing now, doesn't it? WebOS is far more elegant in it's capability to multitask, but now the Apple marketing machine will turn limited multitasking into the new buzzword in smartphones even though my I-don't-know-how-many-prior-Palm-products have done essentially this much and more for years.
I don't know about you, but I've noticed a significant leap in the number of business colleagues lately who've switched from Blackberry devices to iphones. I was used to seeing every soccermom and Starbucks patron on them, but now I'm noticing a lot more heavy business users. I think iphone 4 will just about wipe out the rest of the people I know not using one.
The thing that gets me is how terrible a deal AT&T is and people still go there. I guess the answer is now that more businesses are supporting iphone and the result is what I've noticed lately, so it's all expensed.
All it would take for me to move back to Palm is a Pre with an expansion slot, a slightly better keyboard like prior Treos, and a helluva lot better battery life. I really don't want to move to Android, but the EVO is pulling me that way quickly with or without elegant multitasking.
well, apparently according to time machines, marketing seems to be one of the main culprits of palm's demise. i can see it now. apple releases 4.0, the new iphone, iphone runs ad with iphone in hand showing multitasking, voiceover "now you can check your email, listen to your music, pull up gps...all at the same time." and then the people will eat it like jelly.
can you imagine how even more difficult it will be for the rest of this year competing against that?
"find themselves having to a whole
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iPhone OS 4.0 looks to me like a rather pathetic blend of trying to catch up to webOS and trying to catch up to Android (and failing at both)
interesting. we'll see when the numbers come in...
It doesn't matter what the Iphone can or can't do. It's an Iphone, it's made by apple. It will sell and sell and sell. Most of the people i know with an iphone have it not for the need of a smartphone but because IT'S AN IPHONE. I have my pre, which i love ( because I'm a Tech Geek probably) and work have forced an iphone on me, so I see the pros and cons for both. Palm for people who care, Apple for people who don't.
The comparison with Subfolder icons in iPhone vs Pre: I don't care much about Add/Delete Page in Pre. I rarely use it. Most times, I just type for the App. Universal Search to look for Apps rocks.
Another point which would make iPhone 4.0 a non-issue is Flash support. I know, keeps getting delayed. But it's a game changer in the devlopment of Apps.