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Nothing Keeps Apple From Making an Android Phone Except Common Sense

businessweek.com

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Re: Nothing Keeps Apple From Making an Android Phone Except Common Sense

#21

Post by coralreef »

WildUtah wrote: post #17
bitwize wrote: post #6

Apple has been doing the right thing all along. Because the very thing that enabled Apple to rise from near bankruptcy to just about the most profitable company in the history of capitalism is providing and controlling an integrated, soup-to-nuts hardware and software ecosystem. A big part of the reason why Android still feels so janky is that it has to cater to multiple hardware vendors and other stakeholders (carri…

The jankiest thing about Android (well, aside from crappy manufacturer skins and undeletable carrier spamware) is the pauses and delays in user response. Those all come from the disastrous choice to use Java as a programming language. User facing software always feels slow when it's subject to the performance losses of automatic memory management. Java is inherently garbage collected and low power mobile devices just…

I don't know enough about Java/garbage collection but I'm going to challenge your assertion that Java is behind poor UI response.

Re: Nothing Keeps Apple From Making an Android Phone Except Common Sense

#22

Post by Consultant32452 »

mark_integerdsv wrote: post #15
blueskin_ wrote: post #2

All the article really needed to say was "but then Apple fans would try an Android phone, realise the software is better (and likely start experimenting with having root access to their own hardware, which apple certainly dislike), then get an Android phone comparably specced to and cheaper than the iphone 6 instead of one come upgrade time".

>realise the software is better At the risk of noshing down some trollbait, could you perhaps qualify this statement or are you just going to go with your subjectiuve view as fact?

As someone that owns both an Android and iOS phone I think Apple has nicer form factor than the various Android options but Android has superior software. Here's my quick thoughts. iOS has caught up in a lot of the features it was missing early on (multi-tasking) but it still lacks widgets. It may not be for everyone, but I use two widgets on my desktop daily and Apple's answer to it in the notification center is bleh. I originally liked Apple's Passbook but Google's Wallet and Now surpass it in features and in some ways usability. By this I mean Google automatically creates cards for my packages from UPS without any effort for me at all. It also keeps track of my boarding passes, tickets, etc with no effort. Apple's solution requires (generally) that I open an e-mail attachment or something. Last but not least are the Google Apps, most notably Maps but it does include the others. iOS is made better by Google software and most iOS users I know use one or more Google apps. In a full Google platform though the integration is superior. Let's say I'm sitting at my desktop and search for a restaurant. The next time I open Google Now it'll have a card with that restaurant and allow me to navigate there in a single touch.

Re: Nothing Keeps Apple From Making an Android Phone Except Common Sense

#23

Post by Consultant32452 »

WildUtah wrote: post #17
bitwize wrote: post #6

Apple has been doing the right thing all along. Because the very thing that enabled Apple to rise from near bankruptcy to just about the most profitable company in the history of capitalism is providing and controlling an integrated, soup-to-nuts hardware and software ecosystem. A big part of the reason why Android still feels so janky is that it has to cater to multiple hardware vendors and other stakeholders (carri…

The jankiest thing about Android (well, aside from crappy manufacturer skins and undeletable carrier spamware) is the pauses and delays in user response. Those all come from the disastrous choice to use Java as a programming language. User facing software always feels slow when it's subject to the performance losses of automatic memory management. Java is inherently garbage collected and low power mobile devices just…

It's important to note that it's the Java language, but not the Java bytecode or Java Virtual Machine that are used in Android. It could easily have been really any language that Google wished to provide a compiler for towards their custom bytecode/VM. It was somewhat arbitrarily the Java language but was a good business choice IMHO due to the prevalence of Java developers in the market.

Secondly, there's nothing stopping you from writing your apps in C/C++ to get whatever sort of response you need.

Re: Nothing Keeps Apple From Making an Android Phone Except Common Sense

#24

Post by Cowboy_X »

coralreef wrote: post #21
WildUtah wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The jankiest thing about Android (well, aside from crappy manufacturer skins and undeletable carrier spamware) is the pauses and delays in user response. Those all come from the disastrous choice to use Java as a programming language. User facing software always feels slow when it's subject to the performance losses of automatic memory management. Java is inherently garbage collected and low power mobile devices just…

I don't know enough about Java/garbage collection but I'm going to challenge your assertion that Java is behind poor UI response.

Okay, I'm listening.

Re: Nothing Keeps Apple From Making an Android Phone Except Common Sense

#25

Post by al2o3cr »

"And Android is outpacing Apple in the cheaper markets that are gaining importance, so there’s a sort of intuitive sense in the move, if you’re willing to twist the logic into uncomfortable directions."

s/Android/Windows/, move it back ten years, and then count how many PC OEMs are still in the business today.

Did I miss the part where "Businessweek" became a "how to light your money on fire" journal?

Re: Nothing Keeps Apple From Making an Android Phone Except Common Sense

#26

Post by gonehome »

nicholassmith wrote: post #19

If it wasn't for that quote from Woz, pretty much everyone would go 'well that's ridiculous'. And it is, it is ridiculous, Apple would still want a hardware premium because that's the business model, so they wouldn't be able to try and out price the other manufacturers. They'd gain nothing from it. People that want an iPhone want it for the hardware software combination.

> People that want an iPhone want it for the hardware software combination.

I'm not so certain that's case. Today the iPhone is at least feature comparative to Android (turn by turn navigation, LTE, decent google integration and hangouts) - but Android still doesn't have as nice hardware as Apple.

I really wanted Nokia to start making Android devices because they do make beautiful hardware, but unfortunately they went to Windows phone. I'd imagine many android users would switch to apple made hardware if it was available.

Then apple would likely dominate the hardware market for both operating systems - which would be interesting.

Re: Nothing Keeps Apple From Making an Android Phone Except Common Sense

#27

Post by pm90 »

danoprey wrote: post #13
Tarang wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because the very thing that enabled Apple to rise from near bankruptcy to just about the most profitable company in the history of capitalism Adjusted for inflation I think that title still belongs to IBM through the 70s.

Or the East India Company if you want to go even further back.

Can you please elaborate? The East India Company never recovered from its episode of near-bankruptcy

Re: Nothing Keeps Apple From Making an Android Phone Except Common Sense

#28

Post by w1ntermute »

WildUtah wrote: post #17
bitwize wrote: post #6

Apple has been doing the right thing all along. Because the very thing that enabled Apple to rise from near bankruptcy to just about the most profitable company in the history of capitalism is providing and controlling an integrated, soup-to-nuts hardware and software ecosystem. A big part of the reason why Android still feels so janky is that it has to cater to multiple hardware vendors and other stakeholders (carri…

The jankiest thing about Android (well, aside from crappy manufacturer skins and undeletable carrier spamware) is the pauses and delays in user response. Those all come from the disastrous choice to use Java as a programming language. User facing software always feels slow when it's subject to the performance losses of automatic memory management. Java is inherently garbage collected and low power mobile devices just…

You have no idea what you're talking about. The only part of Java used in Android is the syntax. The VM was written from scratch. In fact, Oracle took Google to court over allegations that Google had copied parts of the Java VM (and lost on the majority of counts, getting no payout).

And there is also the fact that I know it's not true because my phone (LG G2) has no problems with touch response.

Re: Nothing Keeps Apple From Making an Android Phone Except Common Sense

#29

Post by nicholassmith »

gonehome wrote: post #26
nicholassmith wrote: post #19

If it wasn't for that quote from Woz, pretty much everyone would go 'well that's ridiculous'. And it is, it is ridiculous, Apple would still want a hardware premium because that's the business model, so they wouldn't be able to try and out price the other manufacturers. They'd gain nothing from it. People that want an iPhone want it for the hardware software combination.

> People that want an iPhone want it for the hardware software combination. I'm not so certain that's case. Today the iPhone is at least feature comparative to Android (turn by turn navigation, LTE, decent google integration and hangouts) - but Android still doesn't have as nice hardware as Apple. I really wanted Nokia to start making Android devices because they do make beautiful hardware, but unfortunately they wen…

I found the HTC One to be pretty solid, not as good as Apple but very nice and very well built. If I remember rightly the stats show a lot of the Android sales are low-to-mid range hardware, so there's possibly not as much reason for companies to build really high end phones if they don't think there's a market.

Re: Nothing Keeps Apple From Making an Android Phone Except Common Sense

#30

Post by LanceH »

mark_integerdsv wrote: post #15
blueskin_ wrote: post #2

All the article really needed to say was "but then Apple fans would try an Android phone, realise the software is better (and likely start experimenting with having root access to their own hardware, which apple certainly dislike), then get an Android phone comparably specced to and cheaper than the iphone 6 instead of one come upgrade time".

>realise the software is better At the risk of noshing down some trollbait, could you perhaps qualify this statement or are you just going to go with your subjectiuve view as fact?

The bitcoin wallet apps are better on Android for one.
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