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Dear Palm, it's just not working out

jwz.livejournal.com

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

#61

Post by ingenium »

scythe wrote: post #28
paulbaumgart wrote: post #4

I haven't tried the Pre myself, but if jwz's experiences aren't unique (most likely), it's really a shame. The specs don't look so bad- is it webOS dragging it down? It looks like Motorola's Droid is the best hope at this point to drive some innovatin' by competing at the level of the iPhone. Or is there another contender I've missed? Is the HTC Hero/G2 worth looking at?

If all webOS applications are coded in JavaScript (so I've heard; didn't look into it too much), the VM overhead could well be dragging things down. Even V8 is ten times as slow as Java or C#, and v8 isn't even available for ARM.

Yeah, the problem is that every single app is written in JavaScript. It works better if you open the apps you use frequently and just leave them open. Then the page remains rendered and is much faster.

Interestingly, it would be possible to code native apps on it via browser plugins. Some parts of WebOS do use this it seems, but only to interact directly with the hardware.

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

#62

Post by herval »

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…

the point here is that the iPhone is a lot less 'fragmentable' than Android since it's controlled by one single manufacturer. Sure, it will eventually change features so much that apps made for the latest hardware will no longer work on previous ones - but it will probably be a lot easier to manage than having a thousand different versions of the hardware, all being released at once...

Plus, AAPL's "throw away and buy the shiny new one" ethos has kept the majority of users constantly updating their already new ipod/iphone/mac for quite some time, so this fragmentation might as well be yet another strong point on their evil marketing plot. "1st gen iphone? Sheesh, that's too old, go get a new one"

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

#63

Post by herval »

codedivine wrote: post #37
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…

On the other hand, it shouldn't be too hard really. People have been developing desktop apps for myriad resolutions for years.

and that (along with slightly minor platform differences) has hurt JavaME so much it's never grew to its full potential... (if it ever had any)

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

#64

Post by aarongough »

jwhitlark wrote: post #54
dystopia wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

That's a good name for a tank! "The imperfect future is coming right at you!" :-p

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

#65

Post by davidw »

unalone wrote: post #39
codedivine wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, it shouldn't be too hard really. People have been developing desktop apps for myriad resolutions for years.

Yes, but we're talking very small screens here, with very little room for design. When you can design any application to run at 800x600, then maybe you don't fill every screen but you have enough space to do what you want. When you're dealing with very small screens, some of which are multitouch and some of which aren't, some of which have physical keyboards and some of which don't, then you have to juggle a lot of v…

The point is not to try and out-Apple Apple - iPhone will probably always be prettier. The point is to be 'good enough' while offering the flexibility, variety and freedom that Apple don't give you.

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

#66

Post by unalone »

davidw wrote: post #65
unalone wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but we're talking very small screens here, with very little room for design. When you can design any application to run at 800x600, then maybe you don't fill every screen but you have enough space to do what you want. When you're dealing with very small screens, some of which are multitouch and some of which aren't, some of which have physical keyboards and some of which don't, then you have to juggle a lot of v…

The point is not to try and out-Apple Apple - iPhone will probably always be prettier. The point is to be 'good enough' while offering the flexibility, variety and freedom that Apple don't give you.

I guess that's what makes it hard for me to comment on this. I don't really care much for flexibility or variety or freedom. I want something to work as well as it possibly can, and don't worry about tweaking it unless the tweaks make it run better. So Android doesn't interest me at all.

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

#67

Post by unalone »

herval wrote: post #62
Daishiman wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

the point here is that the iPhone is a lot less 'fragmentable' than Android since it's controlled by one single manufacturer. Sure, it will eventually change features so much that apps made for the latest hardware will no longer work on previous ones - but it will probably be a lot easier to manage than having a thousand different versions of the hardware, all being released at once... Plus, AAPL's "throw away and bu…

Is that really the ethos you see Apple emanating? Because I've always seen the opposite. One of the things that I thought coolest about Apple back when I was on Windows were the people who talked about installing Leopard on a Powerbook and having it still work perfectly. Ditto the iPhone now. In fact, the line I hear directly from Apple is "Because we have no physical controls, we're allowed to keep our 1st gen iPhones in line with our freshest models, so the iPhone will outlast many of the other phones its age." Certainly my iPod is showing no strain in its second year. I haven't even upgraded to 3.0 and it still feels great.

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

#68

Post by rbanffy »

bhousel wrote: post #43

I agree about the poor performance. I really hope they can fix that somehow, but it's starting to look like the heavy reliance on javascript was a design mistake. However I don't have any problems with Mac sync. I've always used Spanning Sync to keep my Mac synced up with my Google account. Once there, the Pre just finds everything automagically. It has been a bit of a shift in thinking to go from the old model of "I…

"but it's starting to look like the heavy reliance on javascript was a design mistake."

They can always compile it to binary code. Or drop in a faster interpreter, a persistent JIT perhaps. Or even something that spits bytecode to files as needed (like Python)

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

#69

Post by protomyth »

spot wrote: post #49
blasdel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who'd previously been on the business end of subpoenas for data and legal discovery during the Netscape lawsuits, he's paranoid about giving any of his data to Google. That's why he was trying to get his Pre to sync solely to his local computer, despite that really not being what its makers intended.

I am curious. As plenty of business people use gmail/docs, what are the subpoena implications of that?

I am sure the first case with a tech-clueless judge and an overly broad subpoena will be hilarious. The subpoena will probably bring back every document they have on the service since google will not likely be able to spend the time / money or have the obligation / right to edit the request.

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

#70

Post by dejb »

unalone wrote: post #66
davidw wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is not to try and out-Apple Apple - iPhone will probably always be prettier. The point is to be 'good enough' while offering the flexibility, variety and freedom that Apple don't give you.

I guess that's what makes it hard for me to comment on this. I don't really care much for flexibility or variety or freedom. I want something to work as well as it possibly can, and don't worry about tweaking it unless the tweaks make it run better. So Android doesn't interest me at all.

> unless the tweaks make it run better

In a sense all software usage is just a series of tweaks. Otherwise you'd just have a big button to push and it would 'do stuff'. If that 'stuff' just happened to be exactly what you wanted then that would be fantastic. But that isn't reality. Reality is sometimes messy and complex so sometimes you need the ability to tweak things deal with the messy and complex problems from the real world.

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