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Smartphone OS Upgrades: iPhone's "can" vs. Android's "can't"
TechCrunch's post shows a huge discrepancy of smartphones running the latest versions of Android vs. iOS. The numbers will surprise no one that follows mobile tech, but I believe there's a larger point that doesn't even need a chart to make. What should be discussed is how many phones it's even possible to upgrade. That's the real story.
It's well known (if not well reported) that upgrading an Android device is hit or miss. It could be because of the carrier, or the manufacturer, or a combination of both. One thing's certain: Google has no control over the process for any phones other than their own Nexus-branded models, and there's only two of those.
Recently, Computerworld examined carrier and manufacturer "trust" in terms of upgrading Android phones, and the conclusions are dismal. For manufacturers, HTC took top honors:
50 percent of its Android phones having been bumped to Froyo within 2010. Its average upgrade time is also relatively impressive, at 56 days.
Only half their phones were upgraded, but other manufacturers were worse.
Meanwhile, for carriers Verizon took the crown:
A third of the carrier's qualifying Android phones received Froyo within the software's first six months on the market. On average, it took Big Red 58 days to get those updates delivered.
Only a third of the eligible phones are upgraded, yet it's King among carriers.
If you had an HTC phone on Verizon, you had about a 17% chance (one-third of 50%) of upgrading to Froyo last year. And that was your best shot since other manufacturer/carrier combinations were worse.
For the iPhone things are easier. Put simply, 100% of current and -1 generation phones are eligible for upgrades. Apple has even made upgrades available for -2 generation phones, though some features are not available.
It's not just that these iPhones are eligible, but that the carriers have no involvement in the actual upgrade. Just connect the iPhone to iTunes and let it upgrade. That's it. Further, the upgrades are available on the day a new OS is released, not two months later, which is the best Android's manufacturers/carriers can manage.
The mobile market tends to treat their devices as semi-disposable, so it may be unrealistic to discuss models over two years old, but in Android's case "old" models aren't needed to skew the numbers. There are models only five or six months old seemingly "abandoned". This makes Apple's major upgrade to each generation of iPhone, twice, all the more impressive.
No Predictions, Just Observations on the Apple Tablet
Tomorrow is the big day, and by noon PT all will be revealed. I'm tossing my $.02 in the ring with some general observations about what Apple will announce. I'm not getting into detailed predictions -- better men than I have failed miserable at guessing what Apple will do -- but rather some overall comments I have after absorbing hype for the last few weeks.
Though Windows 7 Taskbar Is Weak, You Can Put Folders On It.
Ars Technica Windows 7 Review
So while Windows 7 may not right all of Vista's wrongs, it is absolutely superior to its predecessor. It has three years of improvements, so it can't help but be better. But if you hated Vista's UI, you're going to hate Windows 7's. Worse, in fact, because 7 forces you to use the new Start menu and taskbar, with no possibility of reverting to the old behaviour. If your applications didn't work in Vista, they almost certainly won't work in 7. Sure, 7 has some virtualization tools to help, but this was always possible in Vista too. If you felt Vista was too big and too slow, well, 7 isn't going to provide much joy there, either. Marginal improvements, perhaps, but nothing more.
The above quote, from the closing summary, sure doesn't sound impressive. Still, the entire review (it's long and detailed) is positive overall.
The reviewer thinks Vista got a bad rap. Even though he agrees Windows 7 is actually "Vista R2", he likes it a lot.
In Other Words, Windows 7 Is Just Windows
Iolo also says its tests indicated that Windows 7's startup times, like Vista's, degrade over time. After several "commonly-used" applications have been installed on a new Windows 7 box, for instance, its boot time — again, as measured by the company — slows to two minutes, 34 seconds, an increase of 64%.
No surprise. All anyone talks about is Windows 7's new coat of paint, but underneath it's the same thing as before.
Discoveries in Mac OS X Snow Leopard: It’s The Little Things (And What Have You Found?)
Text Substitution
The system-wide text substitution is great. Go to the Languages and Text control panel to select the ones you want, or add your own:
TextEdit
It took only the addition of a few features to vault TextEdit to my default word processor of choice:- Text replacement, as explained above
- Correct spelling automatically
- Smart dashes
iCal
My favorite new feature in iCal, and it practically brings tears to my eyes, is this:
QuickTime X
So much has been written about the new QuickTime X player that I won’t dwell on it other than to try to define a little bit better what this thing is:- Do not confuse QuickTime X player with the actual QuickTime X technology. The player is the tip of the iceberg you see. QuickTime X is a refinement and tuning of Apple's media technology as ambitious as Snow Leopard was to Leopard.
- QuickTime X player is not QuickTime Pro. Pro allowed editing in the middle of a movie, combining multiple movies into one, better output options, and more.
- QuickTime X player is more than the QuickTime 7 player it replaces. You can trim movies and then upload directly to YouTube or MobileMe. You can also output them to iPod, iPhone or Apple TV devices. It can also record your screen actions, and the performance is better.
And Even More…
Where Does It End?
In this discovery series I specifically avoided the advanced technologies in Snow Leopard like Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL. These are very important, but I wanted the series to focus on what most people could see and make use of immediately. Yet there are more, many more, things to discover. I couldn’t begin to list them all. QuickLook now works in iChat for received a file. Safari now has “plug-in protection” so Adobe Flash (and others) won’t crash the browser. And on and on… What about you? What have you found? I’d love for others to leave their own Snow Leopard discoveries in the comments below. Previous Articles in the Snow Leopard Discovery Series:Discoveries in Mac OS X Snow Leopard: Preview
I think most users are indifferent to Preview. They double-click a PDF or image file, view it, and then quit the app. In Snow Leopard there's a reasonable chance they might notice it all happens faster, and the toolbar has changed, but nothing else. I think that's a shame. Snow Leopard's Preview received enhancements that will elevate it from frequent use to a workhorse for me. However, the way some features were implemented seems odd...
PDF = Pretty Darn Fast.
Preview is fast. I mean, it's really fast. It was always a quick little sucker, but in Snow Leopard's 64-bit trim it opens images and PDF files (even large ones) extremely quickly. For PDFs, other enhancements include:
- Smart text selection (e.g., selecting just one column).
- Open multiple documents in one window; you can search all at once (this can be very handy).
- Speaking of search, it utilizes Grand Central Dispatch to increase speed.
You can also view a PDF as a contact sheet of pages, like so:
I trashed Adobe Reader the minute Preview first appeared, though admittedly my PDF needs are not extensive. (I don't use Adobe Reader on my Windows machines, either). In Snow Leopard, even some die-hard Reader holdouts can probably let go of Adobe in this area.
Do I Have To Draw You A Picture?
Well, yes, sometimes I do. In Leopard, Preview gained the ability to annotate images with ovals, rectangles, arrows, and text. It also gained the "Instant Alpha" feature from Apple's iWork apps. It's useful to annotate pictures with text, or highlight a certain area. Preview's newfound capabilities were welcome, and I utilized them often. The problem is that the features were deficient. It didn't take long to identify what was missing:
- It draw ovals, but not circles.
- It draw rectangles, but not squares.
- It draw arrows, but not lines.
- No control over arrow thickness.
- It has any color you like, as long as it's red.
(That last one isn't so bad, since red is superior to the other, lesser colors of the spectrum. Still, the lack of choice was odd.)
New and Improved
- Hold down Shift while drawing an oval or rectangle to make it a perfect circle or square.
- You have control over arrow heads, placing them at the beginning, end, both ends, or none. (The latter option, of course, makes it a line.)
- You can choose line thickness, which includes an option for dashed lines.
- You can choose a color for annotated items.
Having discovered the above, I tried some other keyboard tricks:
- Hold down Shift while drawing a line to constrain it to 45 degree angles.
- Hold Option while drawing circles, rectangles, and lines to draw them from the center.
Very good, Apple.
Meet Me At The Bar
Image
This makes it easier to access annotation items, and only displays when you need them. It’s very nice, though a bit incomplete.
You Got What You Wanted, What's The Problem?
The devil's in the details, and I'm a bit puzzled by Apple's implementation of the new stuff. The annotation toolbar is at the bottom of a window. Why? Who decided I should mouse up for menus and most toolbars, but mouse down for other controls?
"Eight-by-ten Colored Glossy Photographs With Circles and Arrows and a Paragraph On The Back Of Each One Explaining What Each One Was"
(Sorry, but there was no way I was writing this article without the above reference.) For me, the new tools have many uses:
- My most recent cry for circles was when I did the image at the top of this article. The thought bubble would have taken 20 seconds with circles, but took a couple minutes because I had to make ovals circular, and occasionally started over when I wasn't happy with the results.
- Of course, I hadn’t even dreamed of the thought bubble actually being drawn for me, which is now the case.
- As for lines, there are times I'd rather underline an item, but put a rectangle around it instead because lines were not an option.
- I've already used the line thickness -- along with a more neutral color -- to draw over sensitive information in a screenshot I posted elsewhere.
In short, the new features will get a lot of use. Meanwhile, the occasional trip I made to Skitch will no longer be necessary. Skitch has now been retired; dead to me even before it was born (it's still beta). I could complain that I can’t create a new blank document, or duplicate an object, or group/ungroup items, but I think that would miss the point. I’d hate to see Preview’s speed and convenience sacrificed to make it more of a drawing program it doesn’t need to be. Minor quibbles about implementation aside, the new Preview adds much-needed tools for better annotation of images. It's not meant to be a "true" drawing program. Rather, I view the changes as Apple simply finishing the job they started in Leopard when they decided it would be useful for Preview to have markup tools. All this, and it's faster, too. I'd call that a job well done. Previous Articles in the Snow Leopard Discovery Series:
Discoveries in Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Dock, Exposé, and Spaces
How I Organize
The screenshots below make more sense if you understand how I organize my apps/windows. Put simply, I use six spaces as an integral part of my work. Each space generally only has 1-3 apps in it, so clutter in any one space is minimal.Exposé Alone
Let’s say I’m in space #5 and invoke Exposé. I use a gesture (upper right screen corner) to invoke the "All Windows" option, and see this:
Spaces Alone
Now let’s say I go back to space #5, and instead of invoking Exposé I invoke Spaces (gesture to the lower-left corner). I’ll see this:
Exposé and Spaces: Together
The beauty of Exposé is that it works with Spaces. if I’m showing all my spaces, and then invoke Exposé’s All Windows option, I see everything. (Obviously, if you don't use Spaces then Exposé's All Windows option always shows everything.) Go back to the spaces picture above and imagine if I invoked Exposé from there. In other words, if I quickly moused to the lower-left and then upper-right corners (a natural movement since I’m right handed). I get this:
And It’s Only $29. But Wait, There’s More!
Exposé’s additional polish and window previews are great, but there’s even more, and here’s where the Dock gets involved. Let’s say I’ve done some work in the Finder, and then from any space or application I just click and hold on the Finder icon in the Dock. I see this:
It’s Too Much! My Head’s Gonna Explode!
Well, yes, if you tried to use every method you’re head might explode. But the way you work will lend itself to certain methods that make the most sense for you. Personally, I think Apple added the Dock access so more people would discover Exposé. The Dock makes invoking it more accessible. And by making the windows line up neater, with labels, usability is enhanced no matter how you invoke it. As for me, I’m a Spaces guy, too. The lower-left and/or upper-right corner gesture as needed is easy and natural. I can quickly have a space’s -- or all -- windows right in front of me. Yet as I’m working I rarely have more than a couple apps’ “clutter” to deal with at once. I don’t think I'll use the Dock for Exposé very often, I love using the gestures. But the neater grid, labels, and previews are something I’m already taking advantage of. Previous Articles in the Snow Leopard Discovery Series:
