5 ms·

If you ask me user-facing performance was always a priority. iPhones always feel snappier than Android to me. Android phones often have a noticeable lag when sc

by carlmr 4y ago

If you ask me user-facing performance was always a priority. iPhones always feel snappier than Android to me. Android phones often have a noticeable lag when scrolling, the apps take longer to open, the screen freezes more often. Even with higher performing chips on some Samsung phones, the iPhone always feels faster. Most consumers don't care about how performant the chip is, but they do care about visible performance.

ajross 4y ago
> If you ask me user-facing performance was always a priority. Go compare a Mac in 1998 vs. a garbage-tier shopping mall Windows machine. Apple almost died for a reason.
hooverd 4y ago
Samsung just makes ungodly slow Android UIs. I have stock Android on my Pixel 5 and I haven't noticed any slowness.
- joshstrange 4y ago
  That may be true but here is the issue. An iPhone is an iPhone is an iPhone for the most part, the same cannot be said for Android. I don't have a Pixel but I have a Samsung phone to test with that makes me want to pull my hair out but a similarly old iOS device doesn't. The older iOS device might be slower than a new one but it still outperforms the Samsung.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    > the same cannot be said for Android. I don't have a Pixel It's a little silly to criticize their argument, then. Android is not a uniform experience because it runs on everything. Your Raspberry Pi can boot Android with the right drivers. It certainly won't be your "iPhone is an iPhone is an iPhone" experience, but that's because the AOSP exists. It's reductive and a non-argument. Now, you also don't need to go build a fresh AOSP image or install GrapheneOS to argue in good faith. That being said, if you have to make vendors look like the boogeyman to win an online argument about cell phones, you're likely building a case that works equally well against Apple.
    - joshstrange 4y ago
      > That being said, if you have to make vendors look like the boogeyman to win an online argument about cell phones, you're likely building a case that works equally well against Apple. Samsung is the top/biggest Android manufacturer from everything I can find online and all the other non-Pixel phones are equally trashy (full of crapware, reskinned apps, etc). The Pixel is almost a rounding error in North America coming in at ~2% vs Samsung at ~30% and Apple at about ~54% [0]. I think it's perfectly fair to judge the OS based on the biggest install base. [0] https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/north-america https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/north-...
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        > I think it's perfectly fair to judge the OS based on the biggest install base. And not the designer of the OS? I guess that's fair enough, but you should be mad at Samsung then. Google licenses Android to thousands of manufacturers, and all of them can modify it. That's a non-argument though, like I was saying. Again, you don't need a Pixel to argue in good faith here, you're just being mad at the entirely wrong party.
        joshstrange 4y ago
        Ahh, I apologize, I misunderstood the point you were making. "Android" is not to blame for "Samsung"'s implementation of it, I agree. What I was trying to say originally (and I'll admit I think we got off-track) is, more or less, that Android is not 1 "thing", it's a bunch of things and some of them are not well done (Samsung/etc) and other are better (Google) but the inconsistency taints the whole OS for me. I'm coming at this both as a user and as a developer. My iOS apps or web pages generally have a bug or they don't across all of iOS, the same is not true for Android. I pay for BrowserStack first and foremost so I can test my app on the exact make/model/OS of Android that a user has who reports an issue (or that comes from Sentry). There are differences in the iOS versions but I've rarely been bitten by that whereas I have been for Android a number of times (normally due to Samsung vs Google vs Other, even if they are all the "same" Android version).
CharlesW 4y ago
> If you ask me user-facing performance was always a priority. You're absolutely correct, every major Apple architectural change has been motivated in large part by performance. For example, the MacUser cover introducing PowerPC was "FASTEST EVER! PowerPC Macs • Five Times Faster • Outperforms Pentium". Apple was effectively forced to move to Intel because IBM fabrication caused PowerPC to fall behind performance goals. And of course, performance continues to be a primary motivation behind the move to Apple Silicon.
- radicaldreamer 4y ago
  Performance per watt, not pure performance.
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    That's an important part of the performance story, but Apple wouldn't have switched architectures without a clear leap in pure performance even if performance-per-watt was better. Apple waited to transition desktops/laptops to Apple Silicon until they could demonstrate a definitive performance advantage over Intel.
kitsunesoba 4y ago
Responsiveness definitely matters. It's something that users perceive even if they can't name it specifically. On that note, it might've just been my imagination, but I swear that OS X 10.5/10.6 had a different responsiveness profiles on PowerPC and Intel Macs. Somehow Core 2 Duo Macs that on paper and in benchmarks outstripped the single core PPC G5 Macs they replaced quite significantly on every metric felt noticeably less responsive with more frequent beachballing. Really weird.

by carlmr 4y ago

ajross 4y ago

> If you ask me user-facing performance was always a priority. Go compare a Mac in 1998 vs. a garbage-tier shopping mall Windows machine. Apple almost died for a reason.

hooverd 4y ago

Samsung just makes ungodly slow Android UIs. I have stock Android on my Pixel 5 and I haven't noticed any slowness.

joshstrange 4y ago
That may be true but here is the issue. An iPhone is an iPhone is an iPhone for the most part, the same cannot be said for Android. I don't have a Pixel but I have a Samsung phone to test with that makes me want to pull my hair out but a similarly old iOS device doesn't. The older iOS device might be slower than a new one but it still outperforms the Samsung.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  > the same cannot be said for Android. I don't have a Pixel It's a little silly to criticize their argument, then. Android is not a uniform experience because it runs on everything. Your Raspberry Pi can boot Android with the right drivers. It certainly won't be your "iPhone is an iPhone is an iPhone" experience, but that's because the AOSP exists. It's reductive and a non-argument. Now, you also don't need to go build a fresh AOSP image or install GrapheneOS to argue in good faith. That being said, if you have to make vendors look like the boogeyman to win an online argument about cell phones, you're likely building a case that works equally well against Apple.
  - joshstrange 4y ago
    > That being said, if you have to make vendors look like the boogeyman to win an online argument about cell phones, you're likely building a case that works equally well against Apple. Samsung is the top/biggest Android manufacturer from everything I can find online and all the other non-Pixel phones are equally trashy (full of crapware, reskinned apps, etc). The Pixel is almost a rounding error in North America coming in at ~2% vs Samsung at ~30% and Apple at about ~54% [0]. I think it's perfectly fair to judge the OS based on the biggest install base. [0] https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/north-america https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/north-...
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      > I think it's perfectly fair to judge the OS based on the biggest install base. And not the designer of the OS? I guess that's fair enough, but you should be mad at Samsung then. Google licenses Android to thousands of manufacturers, and all of them can modify it. That's a non-argument though, like I was saying. Again, you don't need a Pixel to argue in good faith here, you're just being mad at the entirely wrong party.
      - joshstrange 4y ago
        Ahh, I apologize, I misunderstood the point you were making. "Android" is not to blame for "Samsung"'s implementation of it, I agree. What I was trying to say originally (and I'll admit I think we got off-track) is, more or less, that Android is not 1 "thing", it's a bunch of things and some of them are not well done (Samsung/etc) and other are better (Google) but the inconsistency taints the whole OS for me. I'm coming at this both as a user and as a developer. My iOS apps or web pages generally have a bug or they don't across all of iOS, the same is not true for Android. I pay for BrowserStack first and foremost so I can test my app on the exact make/model/OS of Android that a user has who reports an issue (or that comes from Sentry). There are differences in the iOS versions but I've rarely been bitten by that whereas I have been for Android a number of times (normally due to Samsung vs Google vs Other, even if they are all the "same" Android version).

CharlesW 4y ago

> If you ask me user-facing performance was always a priority. You're absolutely correct, every major Apple architectural change has been motivated in large part by performance. For example, the MacUser cover introducing PowerPC was "FASTEST EVER! PowerPC Macs • Five Times Faster • Outperforms Pentium". Apple was effectively forced to move to Intel because IBM fabrication caused PowerPC to fall behind performance goals. And of course, performance continues to be a primary motivation behind the move to Apple Silicon.

radicaldreamer 4y ago
Performance per watt, not pure performance.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  That's an important part of the performance story, but Apple wouldn't have switched architectures without a clear leap in pure performance even if performance-per-watt was better. Apple waited to transition desktops/laptops to Apple Silicon until they could demonstrate a definitive performance advantage over Intel.

kitsunesoba 4y ago

Responsiveness definitely matters. It's something that users perceive even if they can't name it specifically. On that note, it might've just been my imagination, but I swear that OS X 10.5/10.6 had a different responsiveness profiles on PowerPC and Intel Macs. Somehow Core 2 Duo Macs that on paper and in benchmarks outstripped the single core PPC G5 Macs they replaced quite significantly on every metric felt noticeably less responsive with more frequent beachballing. Really weird.