6 ms·

It's not about Apple per se because I am pretty sure Windows Phone does not have these problems either. It's an attention to detail thing. That they shipped the

by gfodor 13y ago

It's not about Apple per se because I am pretty sure Windows Phone does not have these problems either. It's an attention to detail thing. That they shipped the S4 with obvious animation lag shows they may just be blind to it or notice it and make a calculation that the tradeoff is not worth it to fix it. In other words, they're willing to ship something that is kind of shitty because of a cost-benefit analysis, or they can't even see that it's shitty. This to me is not the strategy of a company who is seeking a leadership position in terms of innovation, and in this market, a leadership position is pretty important since things change so quickly. Say what you will about Apple, but it's pretty clear they pride themselves on shipping things they are proud to put their name on because they only ship it when they feel the details are right. The App Store review process is in this spirit, they don't want shitty apps screwing up the experience on their phones. This is why the Maps debacle was a catalyst for their stock plummeting, it showed to many this may have been lost with the loss of Jobs. I think the final build of iOS 7 is going to speak volumes about how Apple's culture has changed or not. If they get the details right, they've still got it. If it's laggy, has minor usability issues everywhere, etc, then that is the type of thing that I think spells Apple's doom. edit: To summarize, I don't think 'animation lag' is in the same class of tradeoffs as 'open vs closed app stores.' Animation lag is a bug, and makes your work look objectively shitty, full stop. Animation lag 'matters' to everyone, even if they don't overtly notice it, because to everyone, animation lag breaks the illusion of fluid motion and interactivity on a subconscious level. It's sloppiness, plain and simple.

wtetzner 13y ago
> To summarize, I don't think 'animation lag' is in the same class of tradeoffs as 'open vs closed app stores.' Animation lag is a bug I think a bug is more forgivable than a deliberate decision to make things broken (closed app store).
Daishiman 13y ago
Censored applications are a moral failure about an order of magnitude worse. And lag bugs are a result of a technological decision in Android made 8 years ago with a cost that goes far beyond a simple fix (replacing the Java runtime with something with deterministic memory management). It's likely that in time we'll see a native of manually memory-managed runtime in Android, at a huge development cost; I can hardly see Apple providing an open ecosystem, ever.
Peaker 13y ago
> The App Store review process is in this spirit, they don't want shitty apps screwing up the experience on their phones. This is false. Apple has banned applications for dubious grounds, such as competing with Apple. Extremely useful apps like Swype and its alternatives have been banned. The app store is not just about protecting users from shitty apps, it is also about total control over the iOS platform, often to the detriment of users.
- oblique63 13y ago
  And this is why I started boycotting Apple products. Honestly, I agree with about 99% of the 'pro-apple' arguments here, because it is frustrating that companies aren't stepping up their UX game, but that's just peanuts compared to this type of nonsense: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6092875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6092875 Luckily, my Nexus 4 has given me a smoother experience than even my old ipad 2 so far (can't say the same of my nexus 7 unfortunately), so it isn't that bad either way.
- gfodor 13y ago
  I agree that there have been times where Apple has not allowed an app in the app store for dubious reasons. For example, not allowing Google Maps for the longest time was ridiculous and blatantly anti-competitive. Swype however is kind of an obvious example of something they likely are not allowing not because of fear of competition but because Swype, if successful, would effectively fragment the text input mechanism on iOS. I can respect the argument that on iOS Apple wants to maintain control of the experience of entering text. Regardless if you feel this is an ethical thing to do, I think you have to acknowledge that in that case it is less about anti-competitive behavior and more about maintaining consistency, which is a core tenet of good design. I think overall the App Store process is largely about maintaining things like quality, consistency, and performance, and if you don't believe me you can look to examples like the Facebook platform where the element of human-screening was ignored and the place filled up with garbage.
  - Daishiman 13y ago
    That's a pretty BS excuse, they could trivially provide guidelines for input systems that don't fragment things subtantially. They simply don't care about the segment and would rather support a good-enough solution than a best-of-breed.
zmmmmm 13y ago
> they're willing to ship something that is kind of shitty because of a cost-benefit analysis, or they can't even see that it's shitty Your use of the word "shitty" here is highly subjective though. The evidence seems to be that most (or at very least a non-trivial subset of) consumers don't know, don't care or even actively prefer the "shitty" experience. Thus one could even argue that Samsung, far from being unaware or lazy is actively choosing this as the most rational and logical path to profits. It may just be that the people such as yourself are in the 10% of the population who are a) particularly sensitive to this sort of thing and b) extremely used to the iPhone level of experience. Now I myself also find the stock Samsung experience incredibly ugly and laggy. The interesting thing is that you can remedy it in about 30 seconds by dragging a few widgets off the screen, disabling a few useless services and/or putting an alternative launcher on. Thus most of the lagginess is only "skin deep" and not a fundamental property of their phones. I think internally Samsung actually does very good engineering and optimization of their phones. At some point the marketing department gets a hold of the phone and completely ruins it, but thankfully it is too far down the chain for them to do any fundamental damage to it.
- gfodor 13y ago
  I mean, you are largely re-iterating my argument, it just sounds like you are taking issue with my use of the word "shitty." I am pretty sure Samsung is aware of this stuff, but as you say they choose not to address it (or are unable to, or whatever.) The difference is that if the iPhone 5S for example was choppy when exiting out of apps, Apple would just not ship it, even if they think a lot of people would not notice. There is still such a thing as craftsmanship. When building a dresser, a craftsman ensures the back of the dresser looks as clean and elegant as the front, despite the fact that people will generally never see the back. A corporation churning out dressers as cheap as it can will just line the back with particle board. In furniture, where things generally don't change, this is a sound strategy, but in technology, building a company churning out garbage (relatively speaking) I think tends to catch up to you since you won't attract craftsmen to help create the next big thing. If it wasn't obvious already, I'm an Apple shareholder, and I am not worried about Samsung. Samsung has made it very clear over and over that there is very little element of craftsmanship in their corporate culture, from the output of their work (like laggy animations and stock installs reminiscent of Windows 98 crapware) and the Onion-seque internal slide decks where they robotically ripped off every element of the iPhone they legally could, likely without asking themselves why those things were designed the way they were. I'm far more worried about Google, who have shown that they both can and want to get better at design, and have a unparalleled capability to build services to power well-designed products. And Microsoft has shown they have the will to change, and are swinging the bat, even though they haven't hit the ball yet. Comparatively speaking Samsung is kind of a joke and when a new paradigm comes along (wearables, a dramatic shift in smartphones, etc) unless they can xerox their way to keeping up they will be left behind. They caught this particular wave perfectly, and are leveraging a very unique situation (Google being a free remote engineering department) to their advantage. I'm pretty sure the cat is out of the bag and Google is going to ensure Samsung is not riding their coattails to profits when the next wave hits.
vacri 13y ago
Say what you will about Apple, but it's pretty clear they pride themselves on shipping things they are proud to put their name on because they only ship it when they feel the details are right. Apple has had a string of shitty products. It's just that people are too busy talking about their good ones and block out the bad ones, for some reason giving Apple a free pass that they don't give other vendors. I once got a video ipod. The marketing was "You can watch movies on it!". Yes, if those movies are shorter than 45 minutes in length. It was actually a substandard bit of kit - the video screen was mostly useless, and the windows version of iTunes that I had to load it with was unmitigated shit - and famously so. I mean what about comparing an animation lag - an annoyance - to the 'death grip' phone that didn't work as a phone? Apple make nice kit, but the idea that they only do good work needs to die. They are superior designers and astounding marketers, but they're certainly not perfect.

by gfodor 13y ago

wtetzner 13y ago

> To summarize, I don't think 'animation lag' is in the same class of tradeoffs as 'open vs closed app stores.' Animation lag is a bug I think a bug is more forgivable than a deliberate decision to make things broken (closed app store).

Daishiman 13y ago

Censored applications are a moral failure about an order of magnitude worse. And lag bugs are a result of a technological decision in Android made 8 years ago with a cost that goes far beyond a simple fix (replacing the Java runtime with something with deterministic memory management). It's likely that in time we'll see a native of manually memory-managed runtime in Android, at a huge development cost; I can hardly see Apple providing an open ecosystem, ever.

Peaker 13y ago

> The App Store review process is in this spirit, they don't want shitty apps screwing up the experience on their phones. This is false. Apple has banned applications for dubious grounds, such as competing with Apple. Extremely useful apps like Swype and its alternatives have been banned. The app store is not just about protecting users from shitty apps, it is also about total control over the iOS platform, often to the detriment of users.

oblique63 13y ago
And this is why I started boycotting Apple products. Honestly, I agree with about 99% of the 'pro-apple' arguments here, because it is frustrating that companies aren't stepping up their UX game, but that's just peanuts compared to this type of nonsense: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6092875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6092875 Luckily, my Nexus 4 has given me a smoother experience than even my old ipad 2 so far (can't say the same of my nexus 7 unfortunately), so it isn't that bad either way.
gfodor 13y ago
I agree that there have been times where Apple has not allowed an app in the app store for dubious reasons. For example, not allowing Google Maps for the longest time was ridiculous and blatantly anti-competitive. Swype however is kind of an obvious example of something they likely are not allowing not because of fear of competition but because Swype, if successful, would effectively fragment the text input mechanism on iOS. I can respect the argument that on iOS Apple wants to maintain control of the experience of entering text. Regardless if you feel this is an ethical thing to do, I think you have to acknowledge that in that case it is less about anti-competitive behavior and more about maintaining consistency, which is a core tenet of good design. I think overall the App Store process is largely about maintaining things like quality, consistency, and performance, and if you don't believe me you can look to examples like the Facebook platform where the element of human-screening was ignored and the place filled up with garbage.
- Daishiman 13y ago
  That's a pretty BS excuse, they could trivially provide guidelines for input systems that don't fragment things subtantially. They simply don't care about the segment and would rather support a good-enough solution than a best-of-breed.

zmmmmm 13y ago

> they're willing to ship something that is kind of shitty because of a cost-benefit analysis, or they can't even see that it's shitty Your use of the word "shitty" here is highly subjective though. The evidence seems to be that most (or at very least a non-trivial subset of) consumers don't know, don't care or even actively prefer the "shitty" experience. Thus one could even argue that Samsung, far from being unaware or lazy is actively choosing this as the most rational and logical path to profits. It may just be that the people such as yourself are in the 10% of the population who are a) particularly sensitive to this sort of thing and b) extremely used to the iPhone level of experience. Now I myself also find the stock Samsung experience incredibly ugly and laggy. The interesting thing is that you can remedy it in about 30 seconds by dragging a few widgets off the screen, disabling a few useless services and/or putting an alternative launcher on. Thus most of the lagginess is only "skin deep" and not a fundamental property of their phones. I think internally Samsung actually does very good engineering and optimization of their phones. At some point the marketing department gets a hold of the phone and completely ruins it, but thankfully it is too far down the chain for them to do any fundamental damage to it.

gfodor 13y ago
I mean, you are largely re-iterating my argument, it just sounds like you are taking issue with my use of the word "shitty." I am pretty sure Samsung is aware of this stuff, but as you say they choose not to address it (or are unable to, or whatever.) The difference is that if the iPhone 5S for example was choppy when exiting out of apps, Apple would just not ship it, even if they think a lot of people would not notice. There is still such a thing as craftsmanship. When building a dresser, a craftsman ensures the back of the dresser looks as clean and elegant as the front, despite the fact that people will generally never see the back. A corporation churning out dressers as cheap as it can will just line the back with particle board. In furniture, where things generally don't change, this is a sound strategy, but in technology, building a company churning out garbage (relatively speaking) I think tends to catch up to you since you won't attract craftsmen to help create the next big thing. If it wasn't obvious already, I'm an Apple shareholder, and I am not worried about Samsung. Samsung has made it very clear over and over that there is very little element of craftsmanship in their corporate culture, from the output of their work (like laggy animations and stock installs reminiscent of Windows 98 crapware) and the Onion-seque internal slide decks where they robotically ripped off every element of the iPhone they legally could, likely without asking themselves why those things were designed the way they were. I'm far more worried about Google, who have shown that they both can and want to get better at design, and have a unparalleled capability to build services to power well-designed products. And Microsoft has shown they have the will to change, and are swinging the bat, even though they haven't hit the ball yet. Comparatively speaking Samsung is kind of a joke and when a new paradigm comes along (wearables, a dramatic shift in smartphones, etc) unless they can xerox their way to keeping up they will be left behind. They caught this particular wave perfectly, and are leveraging a very unique situation (Google being a free remote engineering department) to their advantage. I'm pretty sure the cat is out of the bag and Google is going to ensure Samsung is not riding their coattails to profits when the next wave hits.

vacri 13y ago

Say what you will about Apple, but it's pretty clear they pride themselves on shipping things they are proud to put their name on because they only ship it when they feel the details are right. Apple has had a string of shitty products. It's just that people are too busy talking about their good ones and block out the bad ones, for some reason giving Apple a free pass that they don't give other vendors. I once got a video ipod. The marketing was "You can watch movies on it!". Yes, if those movies are shorter than 45 minutes in length. It was actually a substandard bit of kit - the video screen was mostly useless, and the windows version of iTunes that I had to load it with was unmitigated shit - and famously so. I mean what about comparing an animation lag - an annoyance - to the 'death grip' phone that didn't work as a phone? Apple make nice kit, but the idea that they only do good work needs to die. They are superior designers and astounding marketers, but they're certainly not perfect.