Dear Palm, it's just not working out • Hacker News Board

Re: Dear Palm, it's just not working out

#51

Post by there » Tue, Oct 20, 2009, 4:16 PM UTC

archon810 wrote: post #9

Absolutely agreed on the lag. My fiancee has the Pre and the experience has been going downhill from day 1, worse and worse each day. The lag is absolutely unbearable and one thing jwz forgot to mention is the shit battery life ( She just uses her work old blackberry now with like a 5 day battery life. It gets the job done. I can't agree on jwz's Android opinion based on some random baseless rumors. I have an Android…

ironically, lag was one of the reasons i ditched my iphone. bringing up the camera application would take 5 seconds to be able to take a picture, apps would take a long time to start and then end up crashing shortly after.

now i'm on an android phone (the t-mobile mytouch) and lag is there too. a phone call comes in and it's slow to respond. the web browser is painfully slow to navigate and clearly chokes on javascript-heavy sites.

i think android and webos will get better over time, but more focus needs to be put on responsiveness. even if the phones don't have all the whiz-bang capabilities, if they are quick to respond to the user, they will at least not frustrate them.

Re: Dear Palm, it's just not working out

#52

Post by dystopia » Tue, Oct 20, 2009, 4:18 PM UTC

unalone wrote: post #34

davidw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on. It's easy to piss on stuff that could be better, but Android is actually a fine platform to develop for, and plenty of applications are showing up. Sure, not as many as iPhone, yet, but there are some pretty cool ones out there. And it's not "the only hope" - there will be more Android phones out, and the whole thing will only continue to improve.

Fake Steve Jobs illustrated the biggest Android problem: When your operating system is designed to be modified for each individual phone, and each phone runs a modified version of the system, then you can't reliably develop for it in the way you can for the iPhone. If I make an iPhone app, then it'll work for every person with an iPhone and every person with an iPod touch. The same's not true for Android, which is wh…

>I've never used Android, unfortunately—can't find people with the phone to irritate/mug

unalone, will you be at Startup School this Saturday? If so, you're welcome to borrow my Android Dev Phone for the day to play around with. I rotate between that phone, an iPhone, and a Nokia E75 depending on what I'm working on.

(back on topic) Considering the amount of attention that jwz gets, someone on the Android team should send him a free phone to tinker with asap.

Re: Dear Palm, it's just not working out

#53

Post by unalone » Tue, Oct 20, 2009, 5:15 PM UTC

dystopia wrote: post #52

unalone wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fake Steve Jobs illustrated the biggest Android problem: When your operating system is designed to be modified for each individual phone, and each phone runs a modified version of the system, then you can't reliably develop for it in the way you can for the iPhone. If I make an iPhone app, then it'll work for every person with an iPhone and every person with an iPod touch. The same's not true for Android, which is wh…

>I've never used Android, unfortunately—can't find people with the phone to irritate/mug unalone, will you be at Startup School this Saturday? If so, you're welcome to borrow my Android Dev Phone for the day to play around with. I rotate between that phone, an iPhone, and a Nokia E75 depending on what I'm working on. (back on topic) Considering the amount of attention that jwz gets, someone on the Android team should…

I would have loved to attend, but I'm on the East Coast.

Re: Dear Palm, it's just not working out

#54

Post by jwhitlark » Tue, Oct 20, 2009, 5:16 PM UTC

dystopia wrote: post #52

unalone wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fake Steve Jobs illustrated the biggest Android problem: When your operating system is designed to be modified for each individual phone, and each phone runs a modified version of the system, then you can't reliably develop for it in the way you can for the iPhone. If I make an iPhone app, then it'll work for every person with an iPhone and every person with an iPod touch. The same's not true for Android, which is wh…

>I've never used Android, unfortunately—can't find people with the phone to irritate/mug unalone, will you be at Startup School this Saturday? If so, you're welcome to borrow my Android Dev Phone for the day to play around with. I rotate between that phone, an iPhone, and a Nokia E75 depending on what I'm working on. (back on topic) Considering the amount of attention that jwz gets, someone on the Android team should…

(Completely off topic) Dystopia, huh? That's what I named my tank back when I was in the army. See you at startup school.

Re: Dear Palm, it's just not working out

#55

Post by tpiddy » Tue, Oct 20, 2009, 5:19 PM UTC

my pre has been pretty snippy and fast most of the time, but was getting progressively slower and doing weird email syncs. after a wipe and reinstall the device its back to being fairly fast.

Re: Dear Palm, it's just not working out

#56

Post by msb » Tue, Oct 20, 2009, 5:29 PM UTC

I have had similar experiences with my Pre, but FWIW not consistently. As expected, the more apps left running load times for new apps definitely increase. I tend to keep most apps closed when not actively using the phone and rarely experience more than a one or two second delay. For example, I just took a picture and capture to view was less then 5 seconds. I closed the camera app as a phone call came in and saw the keypad immediately. On the few occasions where the phone has started creeping, I popped out the battery. Once the OS reloaded all was smooth again.

Re: Dear Palm, it's just not working out

#57

Post by Daishiman » Tue, Oct 20, 2009, 6:09 PM UTC

unalone wrote: post #34

davidw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on. It's easy to piss on stuff that could be better, but Android is actually a fine platform to develop for, and plenty of applications are showing up. Sure, not as many as iPhone, yet, but there are some pretty cool ones out there. And it's not "the only hope" - there will be more Android phones out, and the whole thing will only continue to improve.

Fake Steve Jobs illustrated the biggest Android problem: When your operating system is designed to be modified for each individual phone, and each phone runs a modified version of the system, then you can't reliably develop for it in the way you can for the iPhone. If I make an iPhone app, then it'll work for every person with an iPhone and every person with an iPod touch. The same's not true for Android, which is wh…

Yeah, until the next tech refresh for the iPhone. So then you have iPod Touch 1st and 2nd gen, iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G and 3GS. Bear in mind the 3GS has a more advanced graphics card, and then you need to bear in mind some of these have compass, camera, GPS, etc. That's not a small target by any means.

I seriously wonder what will happen when Apple upgrades the screen resolution to 800x400 or attempts to fit in new functionality such as multitasking without altering the current applications' VMs.

Re: Dear Palm, it's just not working out

#58

Post by vsync » Tue, Oct 20, 2009, 6:48 PM UTC

bhousel wrote: post #45

c00p3r wrote: post #33

They still think it is possible to write apps in javascript? Good luck!

Actually you're probably right on the mark.. Acceleroto's blog post about their experience with developing the Pre version of Air Hockey tells the full story: "Memory management (aka Garbage Collection). WebOS is allows users to run multiple apps at once. Users beg for multitasking. You think it impacts game performance? Absolutely. Even if every app behaves nicely, they all consume memory. Memory management is handl…

Stop-the-world? Really??

Shameful in this day and age especially for the slick multimedia experience they are selling the Pre as.

Re: Dear Palm, it's just not working out

#59

Post by unalone » Tue, Oct 20, 2009, 6:50 PM UTC

Daishiman wrote: post #57

unalone wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fake Steve Jobs illustrated the biggest Android problem: When your operating system is designed to be modified for each individual phone, and each phone runs a modified version of the system, then you can't reliably develop for it in the way you can for the iPhone. If I make an iPhone app, then it'll work for every person with an iPhone and every person with an iPod touch. The same's not true for Android, which is wh…

Yeah, until the next tech refresh for the iPhone. So then you have iPod Touch 1st and 2nd gen, iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G and 3GS. Bear in mind the 3GS has a more advanced graphics card, and then you need to bear in mind some of these have compass, camera, GPS, etc. That's not a small target by any means. I seriously wonder what will happen when Apple upgrades the screen resolution to 800x400 or attempts to fit in new func…

I can run any application on my 1st gen touch. Some things run a bit more slowly for me, but they work. Most things work perfectly. Games sometimes exceed me, but they still look perfect on the screen.

Apple's not stupid. If they up the screen resolution, and I'm not so sure they will any time soon, they'll do it in a way that maintains aspect ratio and offer a way for older apps to adjust. As things stand right now, the resolution is brilliant. Not much reason yet to up it any further.

Re: Dear Palm, it's just not working out

#60

Post by anateus » Tue, Oct 20, 2009, 7:24 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #17

anateus wrote: post #8

Not sure why suddenly jwz is considered to be a consumer electronics guru? There's always churn and any particular device isn't for everyone. He's just very vocal about it. The Pre suffers from some slowdown issues which as some commenters point out is almost certainly a software issue, which means it's fixable :) Would like to see Palm take up the community created patches, but it's the wealth and quality of these o…

Not sure why suddenly jwz is considered to be a consumer electronics guru? You're right, it's shameful that we listen to a guy who might not even have filled in all the application forms to become an officially recognised certified consumer electronics guru :-)

Eh, I meant exactly what I said. An opinion from a person is an opinion from a person. There are ways to become an expert in something. I'd be stupid not to listen to at least some of the things he might say about browser design.

This isn't about empty credentials but about track record. Dude has demonstrated to do X,Y, Z well. I will value his opinion on such matters highly. But just because of XYZ, valuing his opinion on Q doesn't make sense to me. Because most people don't have XYZ, perhaps I'll weight his opinion on Q a tad higher than the average, but not much more than that.

Does this not make sense?

Edit: I should add that any and all complaints of his are valid. Some of them are objectively accurate (loading the calendar app is slow) some of them are subjective. The issue is that both kinds seem to be weighted by people to be highly representative.