iOS 6

[Mize]

Look I'm sorry but ios 6 is as sleep worthy as you can get.

Apple reinvented the smartphone os, but it's essentially an updated 2007 Os.

Apple's competition is not really android, believe it or not its wp8, it's just as fast if not slicker than ios, has the same instant worldwide upgrade scheme, same lack of fragmentation, and wp7 is much newer and intuitive.

With the metro store hopefully uniting all windows devices, and some 100,000 apps already on the table, windows phone 8 will really test the waters imo.

WP7/7.5 is still (at least) one release away from being a "smartphone" OS. It's very pretty but amazingly limited. It's true that iOS has some similar limitations, but they are imposed rather than structural. WP7/7.5 doesn't have universal search or USB mode or bluetooth file transfer or the ability to email attachments other than photos, no multitasking, no file system access (at all) and your stuck with Zune for any type of file transfer to the phone, no tethering or wifi hotspot, etc etc

Basically it's a very pretty feature phone OS with limited email.

Wake me when WP8 hits...I hear it will have a new "revolutionary" feature called "universal search"!

 

[wco81]

I think they look at Maps as a strategic feature, with the potential of location services being the lynchpin for all kinds of transactions.

So Google alienated Apple and isn't going to be allowed to harvest iOS user data for location services.

 

[pcchen]

So, they're doing their own maps because google maps on Android was better? Who else does maps? Seems like a really expensive proposition to cover an app that could be handled by a third party.

Although this is just speculation, but I think Apple wanted to do their own maps for quite a long time, for the purpose of collecting location data. Of course, privacy laws may prohibit collecting individual data without user consent, but the collective data is still very valuable (e.g. you know where the "hotspots" of Apple smartphone users are). This can be very useful for advertising purposes.

 

[french toast]

Yes at the moment wp7 has been dire in terms of sales, but there are lots of reasons why that was, namely:

-uninspiring hardware that was out of date to say the least.
-lack of decent games and apps.
-poor brand recognition.
-no carrier support.
-negative / pro apple/android press.
-lack of any exciting headline grabbing features.
-entering when the market was saturated with ios and android - both at their zenith.
-lastly, not being the priority os for oems, their only manufacturer who gave them that came in right in the last minute with barely any time to adjust.

Despite that, (not forgetting in that same time frame former market behemoths symbian and blackberry have hit the skids ) wp7 has finally got a couple of decent handsets out, and actually been pushed by at least 1 carrier, and got extremely favourable reviews, both from the press and especially hands on from consumers.

Those who have used wp7 don't stop carping on about it.

Wp8 will fix most of the issues mentioned, and word is already spreading about the capability of the system, and how different it is compared to the rest.

Those who go on about about '500,000' apps that ios has don't get it. Its not the old apps that count, it's just the top 100-200 games and apps.
No one will bother about wp not getting nova 1 & 2 if it gets the latest version nova 3(for example ).

I'm not saying wp will take over or anything, but if they stick with it and get a decent foothold then I can see wp becoming a solid alternative and pulling market share away.

 

[Grall]

We'll see how WP8 does after it's been released, anything else is just speculation. MS has never done well (at all) in the mobile market space, and their first shot at a modern smartphone OS (WP7) was largely a dud thanks to picking such crappy hardware to run it on. It's like they wanted it to fail, I don't get it.

Essentially they're starting with near-zero customer mindshare and goodwill with WP8, just like they did with WP7. At least they have bunches of apps now instead of nothing, but shit, everybody's got apps these days. Even RIM's got apps. Or at least I think they do... It's no selling point that'll convince anyone.

 

[silent_guy]

The number of apps was important during the initial land grab, when you still needed to convince people to switch from a feature to smart phone. It started to lose its meaning long before people stopped using it as an argument. Initial dominance created a positive feedback loop of developers choosing it as their prime platform. It will be a long time before Win something reaches that position. Right now, the money isn't there. People praise metro for its elegance, they don't say "let's buy one to run apps on it".

 

[french toast]

I may be out of the loop the last few weeks, but didn't Microsoft more or less confirm wp8 upgrade?

 

[wco81]

Does high-end hardware move most of the volume? I think the popularity of Android, especially in countries with strong prepaid markets (i.e. outside of North America), are the cheap phones, the 99 Euro ones without contract.

Huawei and ZTE aren't sexy brands but they move a lot of units.

So that is how Nokia built its big market share, with cheap phones for Asia and Africa. So WP had to account for low-spec hardware to build volume and share.

 

[Pressure]

Siri isn't available on the new iPad either. There is only voice dictation, and I am not sure why that is only available on the iPad 3 as it sends data to a server, does no local procressing (save perhaps some data compression, but I doubt that couldn't be handled by the old iPad, or even the iPad 1).

And voice dictation isn't available for my language - I have to set it to English to even see that option. It works quite well for us, but I haven't found it useful yet at all.

Siri is coming with iOS 6 for the new iPad, which is why I am wondering what holds the iPad 2 back from receiving it. After all, it has the exact same SoC as the iPhone 4S. Is it really just the extra audio chip?

 

[Jubei]

Does high-end hardware move most of the volume? I think the popularity of Android, especially in countries with strong prepaid markets (i.e. outside of North America), are the cheap phones, the 99 Euro ones without contract.

Huawei and ZTE aren't sexy brands but they move a lot of units.

So that is how Nokia built its big market share, with cheap phones for Asia and Africa. So WP had to account for low-spec hardware to build volume and share.

You need to take into account that a lot of the chinese/indian Android phones are using forked Android wich means the OS is free. Microsoft wants money to license WP7.5

So considering how small the margins are for these low budget phones i think Nokia is in deep trouble even in this market

 

[Mize]

I may be out of the loop the last few weeks, but didn't Microsoft more or less confirm wp8 upgrade?

Not even close. They've actually pulled back apps for lower RAM WP7/7.5 phones and hinted that NOTHING that's currently for sale can run WP8. There was one person who said something about upgrading a Lumia 900 to WP8 and they quickly retracted it with an oops.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

And Apple continues showing how you should do mobile OS: iOS6 EVEN SUPPORTS THE iPhone 3DS. (*Edit: 3DS? The Nintendo phone??? 3GS, I meant to say!) This is why Apple has 80+ percent of users using the latest release, when Android only has 7% of its users using its "dairy product".

Well to be honest. Apple often doesn't enable new features on older devices for marketing reasons only and my Ipad 1 became practically useless after Apple made it slow as hell with iOS 5. It was way better straight out of the box, before Apple had done any additional "support" for it.

 

[pcchen]

Those who go on about about '500,000' apps that ios has don't get it. Its not the old apps that count, it's just the top 100-200 games and apps.
No one will bother about wp not getting nova 1 & 2 if it gets the latest version nova 3(for example ).

While this is generally true, but, on the other hand, look how other desktop OSes went with that attitude.
The point of iOS's app store with 500k apps is not that it has so many apps, it's that most app developers actually want to develop for iOS as the favored platform. This is a huge advantage.

This is also why Microsoft wants to bring tablets and desktop PC together with Windows 8: they wants to leverage the dominance of Windows on desktop to piggy back Windows 8 for tablets. If application developers already have to make applications for desktop Windows 8, they'll (supposedly) make small modifications to these applications so that they work on tablets. Then Microsoft won't have to worry about application availability for Windows 8 tablets at all.

 

[pcchen]

Well to be honest. Apple often doesn't enable new features on older devices for marketing reasons only and my Ipad 1 became practically useless after Apple made it slow as hell with iOS 5. It was way better straight out of the box, before Apple had done any additional "support" for it.

Or maybe iPad 1 is just too slow to run iOS 5, not to mention iOS 6? I doubt that Apple deliberately put some for loops in iOS 5 just for iPad 1.

 

[wco81]

Plus the developers first release on iOS and the quality, especially of the iPad apps., tend to be better.

MS had to pay a lot of developers to get a lot of the apps. They may be able to leverage all the Win32 developers to make W8 apps, including apps for ARM devices. But they're going to use different APIs than what they're used to?

Also, it's still not clear how a W8 app. would work across a widely different range of hardware, from a phone with a lower-end ARM SOC to a Intel desktop, without having the problems Android developers have making their apps. work well across the different ARM SOCs used on Android devices.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Or maybe iPad 1 is just too slow to run iOS 5.

Then don't prompt me to update into it or let me go back to previous version if I so choose.

 

[pcchen]

Then don't prompt me to update into it or let me go back to previous version if I so choose.

Isn't that why iOS 6 not supporting iPad 1?

 

[wco81]

Other factor may be that older devices have less RAM. That may come into play as much as CPU/GPU differences.

 

[french toast]

yes Nokia is in knee deep which ever way you look at it.

Ironically symbian is pretty decent now, and is well respected in developing countries no matter what the Weston media says, it has one glaring advantage that android lacks - the ability to run smoothly on arm 11 processors and 256mb ram.

Meego fits into that demographic as a high end symbian, Nokia could have had wp7 as a media focused device for the Weston markets.

Elop has very nearly ruined that company.

 

[french toast]

ok looks like I'm misinformed. too be honest they need to do this, unfortunately I can't see how people with a wp7 device are going to get any new apps developed for them? there is not enough market share to do it?.