Steve Job's Giant Tentpole: iAd [Archive]

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Grall

09-Apr-2010, 06:39

iPhone OS 4.0 announcement overview at Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/04/apple-announces-multitasking-and-more-for-iphone-os-40.ars

Curiously, multitasking and all of that only seems to be destined for iPhone and iPod Touch, not the iPad... Yeah, multitasking is included, although for the most part it seems to be like advanced task switching for the most part; the background app sleeps and waits for conditions that triggers it to occur, like a GPS mapping application. Well, unless it's a music player of course, then it actually continues to work and play music in the background... :D

It's not clear if the app needs to be designed with multitasking in mind (IE: using the new APIs apple's introducing) or if it'll just work with any old existing software out there. I'd assume you need to program in support to try and reduce the risk of the app is doing some dumb s*** that ends up draining the battery even faster than what is currently the case.

Then there's Job's biggest tentpole (since it's something solely designed to bring the money rolling in) : iAd. Seriously here, who wants ads crammed down your mobile phone, draining your battery and racking up costs on your data transmission tab? Hell, I can't stand ads out in the real world! I never watch commercial TV, I've got my landline phone number listed in the no-ads registry and MMS ads blocked on my mobile , and I've got one of those stickers on my mailslot that declines mass-advertising through the mail. Seriously, I'm NOT paying for a device that's designed to deliver advertising to me wherever I happen to be. That's just bullshit. I'm just waiting for when Apple introduces their new GPS-enabled iAd service, so when I walk past a certain store I get "special offers" downloaded to my phone automatically...

Oh, it'll come one day, don't you worry. Maybe not today, but it won't be 10 years either until it's here.

warmi

09-Apr-2010, 07:30

silent_guy

09-Apr-2010, 08:46

Seriously, I'm NOT paying for a device that's designed to deliver advertising to me wherever I happen to be. That's just bullshit. I'm just waiting for when Apple introduces their new GPS-enabled iAd service, so when I walk past a certain store I get "special offers" downloaded to my phone automatically...
Take a deep breath. Relax.

There are tons of apps now that have built-in advertising (e.g. The Weather Channel app). iAd is just another option for developers to add it to theirs. If you don't like it, don't use the app.

It's as simple as that.

silent_guy

09-Apr-2010, 08:51

With 4.0 there are some huge and long awaited changes coming to GLES developers but at this point I can't discuss specifics ....

For anyone who has access to the SDK .. check the API diff log in the GLES section.
I haven't seen the API diff, but I can't be the only one who thought 'OpenCL' when Steve introduced hardware accelerated functions. Those job openings for OpenCL engineers at IMG Tech a year or two ago must result into something at some point...

rpg.314

09-Apr-2010, 09:16

I haven't seen the API diff, but I can't be the only one who thought 'OpenCL' when Steve introduced hardware accelerated functions..iPad, iPhoneX don't have opencl devices in them. (practically speaking of course)
Those job openings for OpenCL engineers at IMG Tech a year or two ago must result into something at some point..
SGX 545 ?

silent_guy

09-Apr-2010, 16:35

iPad, iPhoneX don't have opencl devices in them. (practically speaking of course)
Could it be some proprietary CUDA-like GPU computing them? If they add hardware accelerated function, it has to run on something. Hard to believe that they'd add additional unit for that.

Lazy8s

09-Apr-2010, 17:54

All SGX cores meet the requirement in hardware for at least the embedded profile of OpenCL.

warmi

09-Apr-2010, 18:04

Nah .. their new stuff is entirely related to making pretty pictures prettier :-)

Mike11

10-Apr-2010, 06:11

Curiously, multitasking and all of that only seems to be destined for iPhone and iPod Touch, not the iPad...
Not true. Apple just needs some time to adapt the iPhone OS 4 for the iPad. September/October and iPhone OS 4.1 for all iPhone OS devices seems like a safe bet for the iPad.

Yeah, multitasking is included, although for the most part it seems to be like advanced task switching for the most part; the background app sleeps and waits for conditions that triggers it to occur, like a GPS mapping application. Well, unless it's a music player of course, then it actually continues to work and play music in the background... :D
GPS, music and VoIP can run in the background.

It's not clear if the app needs to be designed with multitasking in mind (IE: using the new APIs apple's introducing)
Yes it does.

Then there's Job's biggest tentpole (since it's something solely designed to bring the money rolling in) : iAd. Seriously here, who wants ads crammed down your mobile phone, draining your battery and racking up costs on your data transmission tab? Hell, I can't stand ads out in the real world! I never watch commercial TV, I've got my landline phone number listed in the no-ads registry and MMS ads blocked on my mobile , and I've got one of those stickers on my mailslot that declines mass-advertising through the mail. Seriously, I'm NOT paying for a device that's designed to deliver advertising to me wherever I happen to be. That's just bullshit.
From the user experience viewpoint, what exactly is the difference between iAd and stuff like AdMob ads that you already have in a lot of free iPhone apps? I don't see how iAd is worse since iAd is controlled by Apple so the ads won't get worse and if you click an iAd it doesn't take you out of the app like current advertisement does.

rpg.314

10-Apr-2010, 06:19

All SGX cores meet the requirement in hardware for at least the embedded profile of OpenCL.

I haven't seen any ocl support advertised for anything other than 545 for any profile.

rpg.314

10-Apr-2010, 06:21

Could it be some proprietary CUDA-like GPU computing them? If they add hardware accelerated function, it has to run on something. Hard to believe that they'd add additional unit for that.

They didn't write, and push theocl spec thru to end up using CUDA.

I didn't see any mention of any hw accel stuff on the live blogs. Where can I find the juicy bits?

idsn6

10-Apr-2010, 06:49

if they add hardware accelerated function, it has to run on something.

NEON and VFP.

silent_guy

10-Apr-2010, 09:34

They didn't write, and push theocl spec thru to end up using CUDA.
Duh, not really CUDA, of course. Something equivalent. I just don't know if their current SGX support OCL or not...

I didn't see any mention of any hw accel stuff on the live blogs. Where can I find the juicy bits?
See here for the short info (http://developer.apple.com/technologies/iphone/whats-new.html). But isdn6 may be right in that it's just NEON and VFP...

rpg.314

10-Apr-2010, 10:04

See here for the short info (http://developer.apple.com/technologies/iphone/whats-new.html). But isdn6 may be right in that it's just NEON and VFP...

Meh...

Gain access to a cookbook of hundreds of industry-standard mathematical functions optimized for iPhone and iPod touch, including functions for performing vector and matrix factorizations, multiplying arrays of large integers and computing simultaneous linear equations.

Accelerate library ported to iPx. :roll:

Arwin

10-Apr-2010, 11:50

Mike11

10-Apr-2010, 12:06

What do you think - can we merge this thread with the slightly more appropriately titled one I made here:

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=57129

... or leave these one to just discuss iAd maybe?
Merge! And if you can pick and choose, some of the later replies from the iPad thread could go there too.

Ailuros

12-Apr-2010, 06:33

I haven't seen any ocl support advertised for anything other than 545 for any profile.

All of the SGX cores have an embedded GPGPU profile, while the 545 has a "full" profile (more capabilities, no wonder either since it's a 10.1 compliant core). This however doesn't mean that there's any support yet, unless I've missed something. More here: http://www.imgtec.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=194

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1377710&postcount=54

OpenCL has two profiles, full and embedded. The latter relaxes some requirements (inf/nan, precision, rounding modes, float image filtering, 64-bit integers).

nutball

14-Apr-2010, 19:27

I'm just waiting for when Apple introduces their new GPS-enabled iAd service, so when I walk past a certain store I get "special offers" downloaded to my phone automatically...

Oh, it'll come one day, don't you worry. Maybe not today, but it won't be 10 years either until it's here.

Welcome to the future. Do you honestly believe Android won't go the same way (Google make their money from ... what was it now? Ah yes, context-senstitive advertising), or any other phone OS you might care to project into having a 10 year life-span right now?

wco81

19-Apr-2010, 17:30

The ads would be purely opt-in, right? You have to tap them to view them?

Hmm, emotion in advertising.

Only emotion I associate with ads is annoyance.

Wishmaster

22-Apr-2010, 15:04

Only emotion I associate with ads is annoyance.

Unfortunately due to this new approach to advertising I fear the annoyance will rise, cause whatever apple does it does it better than competition - they even annoy more than other companies :grin: