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John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

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Re: John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

#111

Post by buro9 »

jackowayed wrote: post #16
symesc wrote: post #11

His footnote is interesting: "Although there’s still no decent Android-based equivalent to the iPod Touch." He's right. Based on price, there is no equivalent. On features, the equivalent is a Google Nexus One without a SIM card. Trouble is, that's about to not be available from Google directly. I'm wondering whether we'll be able to buy an N1 without a contract ever again. Disclosure: I bought an N1 directly from Go…

But the N1 isn't even a very good substitute. Although people who buy iTouches love all the apps and the ability to browse the web whenever they have WiFi, in the end, they're buying an mp3 player. They're buying it so that they can listen to music. Not only is the N1 much more expensive, but it also has a much worse music-playing interface. Until someone fixes the Android music player or writes their own (luckily, a…

> Not only is the N1 much more expensive, but it also has a much worse music-playing interface. Until someone fixes the Android music player or writes their own (luckily, an app can have all the privileges that the core apps have, so anyone could just write the Awesome Music Player app and put it in the market)

I really want someone to fix this. Android needs a WinAmp type thing to play and catalogue any music.

The built-in player I've abandoned as it doesn't support FLAC.

I'm using andless ( http://code.google.com/p/andless/ ) which supports FLAC and is probably the cleanest interface. But it lacks a bit of polish (smooth transitions between screens, a tactile feel).

It also lacks album artwork read from meta-data and stuff like that. And it stutters occasionally on playback.

I really don't know about music file formats but just because I want a decent music player once I have some time I'm going to see if I can find any open source libraries elsewhere that I can plug in to see whether I can figure out how to fill these shortcomings.

Justin Frankel if you're reading this... we all know you could do this in a week or two and improve our lives in the same way WinAmp originally transformed the music experience on Windows.

[edit]OK, So I just realised I should do something about this, so I've just asked JF if he'd consider it: http://www.askjf.com/index.php?q=662s and I'm going to grab the Android SDK and work out just how inept I am at this. I guess the andless code is a good place to start.[/edit]

Re: John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

#112

Post by tjogin »

ssp wrote: post #8

Ballmer was not wrong about the iPhone. He said they would get 2-3% of the total phone market , not the smartphone market. He even makes that clear in the part that Gruber quoted: "... 1.3 billion phones ...". That's phones, not smartphones. According to http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/apple-iphone-smartphone-market... in the first quarter of 2010 Apple had 16.1% of smartphones and smartphones were 18.8% of mobile phon…

Ballmer basically laughed the iPhone off as insignificant. Yeah, he's obviously clairvoyant.

Re: John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

#113

Post by nailer »

> One area where the iPhone has been far ahead of Android is in terms of backing up and restoring data. Buy a new iPhone, or install a major OS update, and when you re-sync with iTunes on your desktop, all your apps and data are re-installed.

Gruber doesn't seem to get that Android is cloud based: buy a new Android phone, sign in, and your contacts, apps and bookmarks are available immediately, no finding a PC to tether to.

Music and (for some odd reason) text messages are currently excluded though.

Re: John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

#114

Post by buro9 »

nailer wrote: post #113

> One area where the iPhone has been far ahead of Android is in terms of backing up and restoring data. Buy a new iPhone, or install a major OS update, and when you re-sync with iTunes on your desktop, all your apps and data are re-installed. Gruber doesn't seem to get that Android is cloud based: buy a new Android phone, sign in, and your contacts, apps and bookmarks are available immediately, no finding a PC to tet…

I think he does, but he acknowledges that data isn't included in the previous cloud based offering.

I was blown away when I first got an N1 (my first android) and signed in on startup and immediately had my contacts, email, calendar, etc wired up.

No computer required. No special software required. It just works.

What Google are doing now is taking that further and making that include data like music, pictures, TXT messages, etc. So now when you replace your android that stuff automatically comes across.

What would be lovely is that instead of just sync, whether we could manage the older devices. i.e: Get a new mobile, sync it, declare the old mobile to be wiped and have the old mobile hear that and purge itself.

This helps on the security side, as you could remotely wipe a stolen device. But it also helps with re-selling used phones safe in the knowledge that your data is intact and you're not leaving any on the device.

I think it's the next obvious gap filler in the cloud-owning-the-data space. We can move and sync, now clean up behind us.

Well, that and the fact that if data is persisted across all devices that you eventually will exceed the storage capacity of the device itself. But I'm guessing that network speed will keep pace with this and by the time we're at that crunch point Google will be able to serve that stuff on-demand and just use the phone as a local cache rather than as the persistent storage itself.

Re: John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

#115

Post by robryan »

warfangle wrote: post #89
Tichy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long will people keep on buying MP3 players? Eventually, phones will be good enough to replace them 100% Also, will iPhone OS 4 be available for iPod Touch? I rather doubt it?

Note that this is why standalone MP3 players have been unable to garner marketshare in Japan: everyone's cell phones were already their mp3 player (and they bought the music OTA via their phone, to boot). As is, the days of standalone music players are likely numbered.

What about the ipod classic? For the moment this gives a lot bigger capacity than you can get with a phone and for a lot cheaper price. Plus it's very straight forward to play music.

Although if you were to only carry around one device it would be a phone, just personally everywhere I go that I would usually want a mp3 player I carry a bag making carrying two devices a non issue.

Re: John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

#116

Post by ugh »

Tichy wrote: post #61
Maktab wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple have already stated that iPhone OS 4 will be available for the iPod touch, though only the third-generation touch will get multitasking. I'm not sure why you would have doubted it. How would it have made sense for Apple to exclude it from the new software release?

I have heard that they exclude the oldest iPhone from OS 4, and I thought iPod Touch would be on the same technical level as the oldest iPhones. Why does Apple exclude the old iPhones?

The current iPod touch is on the same level as the 3GS, maybe even a bit faster. It has the same amount of RAM and the CPU might be a bit better.

iPods are released yearly so there is no reason why they shouldn’t be just as fast and have just as much RAM as iPhones. It’s right, though, that the oldest iPod touch (from 2007) won’t get the update. 2nd and 3rd generation iPod touches will but 2nd generation iPod touches won’t get multitasking (just like their brother, the 2nd generation iPhone aka iPhone 3G).

Re: John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

#117

Post by Tuna-Fish »

timr wrote: post #63
ssp wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gruber is right about Microsoft failing at phones and that there is not much they can do about it. However, I don't think Ballmer is in denial about that. It was and is obvious that at some point all phones will be what we call smartphones now. I think Ballmer's point is that even when that happens, the iPhone will not be able to sustain its 16%. It will still have insignificant market share. Android will not, though…

"I think Ballmer asked the right question and got the right answer. He just doesn't have any way to respond to Android." Of course he does: he can give away the new smartphone OS. It's not as if Microsoft has never given away software to win market share.

But when they are both free, they have to compete on quality. And on smartphones, windows loses it's main advantage -- a software library dating back to the dawn of the pc.

Microsoft cannot just take that market, but they can, and in time, probably will fight for it.

Re: John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

#118

Post by watty »

andreyf wrote: post #92
watty wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there going to be security with this feature? I don't think any app/website can send remote commands without having your credentials. If spyware has your kid sister's Google credentials, pop-ups are the last of her worries.

Do you seriously think most GMail accounts are never used on a computer which has spyware installed? You must be joking...

A program that keylogs your machine and grabs your passwords is a virus. You're right they are fairly common but once again a "popup" on your phone from a virus is the least of your worries.

Re: John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

#119

Post by watty »

dave1619 wrote: post #97
riobard wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then people would build Flash apps and just run it in browser and bypass App Store all together. If that happens, not only does Apple give the control to Adobe (and have to rely on Adobe to support iPhone Flash plugin, which is absolutely not what Apple wants), it also loses the benefits of charging 30% of the revenue if the apps would have been sold in App Store. It's worst situation for Apple.

I know Apple doesn't want to support a flash plugin and was burned by Adobe in the past, but with Android supporting flash now Steve Jobs has less excuses to tell users why they can't view flash on websites. Most users won't understand why they're Android friends can access flash sites, but they can't. Apple could work with Adobe to get a flash plugin on the iPhone, they just don't want to. Also, people can make flas…

Apple will create more excuses... I'm thinking security issues will be the next focus.

Flash could (and probably would) hurt AppStore sales. It probably wouldn't be significant but some developers would choose to use or keep using Flash rather than creating a native App.

Re: John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

#120

Post by 10ren »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #117
timr wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I think Ballmer asked the right question and got the right answer. He just doesn't have any way to respond to Android." Of course he does: he can give away the new smartphone OS. It's not as if Microsoft has never given away software to win market share.

But when they are both free, they have to compete on quality. And on smartphones, windows loses it's main advantage -- a software library dating back to the dawn of the pc. Microsoft cannot just take that market, but they can, and in time, probably will fight for it.

What will happen when smartphones become powerful enough to run windows? [Thinking long-term, tectonic shifts here]

There's constraints of display/keyboard size, and the form-factor encourgaes different usages (eg. less business software).

But I think people might start to dock their smartphones to large displays and keyboards at home (that's what I do with my netbook) - like a portable harddrive. Projectors might also become popular, giving a large portable display.

Or, future desktops might actually be smartphone components, wrapped in a desktop package (in the way microcomputers invaded the workstation, minicomputer and mainframe markets).

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