4 ms·

The physical home button for bailing out when problems or boredom strike certainly works well for her.

by frou_dh 17y ago

sh1mmer 17y ago
And for me!
philwelch 17y ago
And it's fast. Everyone complains it doesn't have multitasking, but is there really a better way to switch apps that would be any faster than that even with multitasking?
- pak 17y ago
  The card interface used on the new Palms works pretty well for that. You can basically see it in the way MobileSafari handles tabs, which is about as close to multitasking as you can get on an i$Device.
  - hackernews 17y ago
    It is great on WebOS. The full swipe on the gesture area to flip through the cards is as easy as it gets. I don't see why they couldn't do it on the apple products, they have the bezel for it.
    - jonah 17y ago
      ProSwitcher for your jailbroken iPhone does this nicely. http://tinyurl.com/proswitcher http://tinyurl.com/proswitcher
- aphyr 17y ago
  Yes. Coming from android, the ipad app-switching interface feels cumbersome.
  - ique 17y ago
    A couple of weeks ago everyone in the administration of the school my mom works at got Android phones. Only about 2-3 people understood anything the phone had to offer of about a dozen people. They recently had to take the entire administration through a full-day course on how to use the phone. Do you think this 2 year old could understand the android platform as easily as she does iPhone OS?
    - anigbrowl 17y ago
      I think this tells us more about education administrators than cellphones :-/
    - div 17y ago
      Why not ? Seems like she's proficient in using the iPad because she already was iPhone savvy, as mentioned by the blogpost. Given some time with an Android device, I think she would do just as well sampling apps on Android as she did on iPhone OS. Her way of launching an app, playing around and then pressing the Home button would work on Android just as fine. I also believe there's quite a difference between a 2.5 year old playing around with an OS, and adults who may not be tech-savvy using a smartphone in a meaningful way. Or to phrase it as a question, do you think those people would have as much trouble understanding the iPhone OS as they did the Android OS ?
      - ique 17y ago
        I haven't actually tried out the Android OS that extensively. Aside from testing it now and then on friends phones I've never really used it. Hence my question. Though my own experience with the iPhone is that a two-year-old could actually start using it right away, and that's not the feeling I get from Android. aphyr makes a brilliant point that simplicity and power often compete with each other and maybe Apple is trying to target the less tech-savvy user. Since I interpreted aphyrs comment as saying the Android app-switching method was easier, I was genuinely curious as to wether he thought the Android platform was overall as easy as the iPhone platform.
    - aphyr 17y ago
- coderdude 17y ago
  It's called minimize.
- jrockway 17y ago
  People want multi-tasking for non-interactive tasks. They want to compose email while streaming music, or browse the web while chatting on IRC. So switching doesn't matter much; that's easy with or without multitasking.
  - philwelch 17y ago
    That's why I want multitasking, too. I don't particularly want it for switching apps since that seems fast enough to me.
  - glhaynes 17y ago
    Yeah, I think a lot of the quality of the debate is lost to the word "multitasking". "Backgrounding" seems much more descriptive of what is really desired by most iPhone OS users (and non-users) who say they want "multitasking".

The physical home button for bailing out when problems or boredom strike certainly works well for her.

by frou_dh 17y ago

The physical home button for bailing out when problems or boredom strike certainly works well for her.

sh1mmer 17y ago

And for me!

philwelch 17y ago

And it's fast. Everyone complains it doesn't have multitasking, but is there really a better way to switch apps that would be any faster than that even with multitasking?

pak 17y ago
The card interface used on the new Palms works pretty well for that. You can basically see it in the way MobileSafari handles tabs, which is about as close to multitasking as you can get on an i$Device.
- hackernews 17y ago
  It is great on WebOS. The full swipe on the gesture area to flip through the cards is as easy as it gets. I don't see why they couldn't do it on the apple products, they have the bezel for it.
  - jonah 17y ago
    ProSwitcher for your jailbroken iPhone does this nicely. http://tinyurl.com/proswitcher http://tinyurl.com/proswitcher
aphyr 17y ago
Yes. Coming from android, the ipad app-switching interface feels cumbersome.
- ique 17y ago
  A couple of weeks ago everyone in the administration of the school my mom works at got Android phones. Only about 2-3 people understood anything the phone had to offer of about a dozen people. They recently had to take the entire administration through a full-day course on how to use the phone. Do you think this 2 year old could understand the android platform as easily as she does iPhone OS?
  - anigbrowl 17y ago
    I think this tells us more about education administrators than cellphones :-/
  - div 17y ago
    Why not ? Seems like she's proficient in using the iPad because she already was iPhone savvy, as mentioned by the blogpost. Given some time with an Android device, I think she would do just as well sampling apps on Android as she did on iPhone OS. Her way of launching an app, playing around and then pressing the Home button would work on Android just as fine. I also believe there's quite a difference between a 2.5 year old playing around with an OS, and adults who may not be tech-savvy using a smartphone in a meaningful way. Or to phrase it as a question, do you think those people would have as much trouble understanding the iPhone OS as they did the Android OS ?
    - ique 17y ago
      I haven't actually tried out the Android OS that extensively. Aside from testing it now and then on friends phones I've never really used it. Hence my question. Though my own experience with the iPhone is that a two-year-old could actually start using it right away, and that's not the feeling I get from Android. aphyr makes a brilliant point that simplicity and power often compete with each other and maybe Apple is trying to target the less tech-savvy user. Since I interpreted aphyrs comment as saying the Android app-switching method was easier, I was genuinely curious as to wether he thought the Android platform was overall as easy as the iPhone platform.
  - aphyr 17y ago
coderdude 17y ago
It's called minimize.
jrockway 17y ago
People want multi-tasking for non-interactive tasks. They want to compose email while streaming music, or browse the web while chatting on IRC. So switching doesn't matter much; that's easy with or without multitasking.
- philwelch 17y ago
  That's why I want multitasking, too. I don't particularly want it for switching apps since that seems fast enough to me.
- glhaynes 17y ago
  Yeah, I think a lot of the quality of the debate is lost to the word "multitasking". "Backgrounding" seems much more descriptive of what is really desired by most iPhone OS users (and non-users) who say they want "multitasking".