This gets said a lot, but I think it's because it's true so I'll say it again. Apple's products have almost always been lagging in terms of spec sheet. Whether it's speed benchmarks or just a list of features they are always behind. But it doesn't concern them or most of their customers.
People trying to beat them on spec never will because it's not the game they're playing (at least not right now). They're building and selling user experience; it's the sum of the parts that makes them great, not the quality or performance of individual parts.
Apple only quote numbers when both of the following apply:
1) They beat the competition at that point on it
2) They can present it as a benefit to the UX
Current example: Resolution. They beat the competition, and they present it as a distinct experience benefit.
By and large, they neither strongly compete nor communicate numbers elsewhere. In fact they go so far as to obscure or hide numbers and instead focus exclusively on the quality and experience angles instead.
I'm not a fruit fanboy, but I do think that the way to play the numbers game is to show why they matter in ways that the layman can comprehend. On that front, if Google aren't using this advantage in the sunspiders tests to communicate on a user experience angle then they're missing the advantage of being ahead in the numbers game.
While that's certainly true, this is also to the credit of Lars Bak, the lead programmer on V8. There just aren't many people on earth who have his experience building VM's [1].
No kidding. This page[1] of Ars' Froyo review made me cringe, and I'm a geek who understands all of this stuff! No way I could recommend this to friends & family who aren't into tech for the sake of tech. If that's the cost of removable and upgradeable storage count me out.
By default Froyo manages moving apps between internal storage and the SD card automatically. Normal users never have to see those (admittedly ugly) detail screens. Your complaint is like looking at the man page for vi in Terminal.app and concluding that Mac OS X is only usable by geeks.
But they'll be bitten by this. The Android team are clearly not smart enough to understand why people like the iPhone.
"One obvious downside of external application storage is that the software installed on the SD card will only be available when the card is mounted on the device. If you plug your phone into your computer and enable USB mass storage mode, for example, the software installed on the SD card will not be accessible. Due to this limitation, Google's developer documentation warns that long-running software like background services, live wallpapers, and widgets should not allow SD installation."
Can you imagine explaining this to end users? "Well, if you install to the SD card to get more storage, you can't use this app when your phone is plugged into your computer." This is just... stupid.
"Well, if you install to the SD card to get more storage, you can't use this app when your phone is plugged into your computer."
Plugged in is fine, it's only when the SD card is explicitly mounted as a USB drive that the apps are unavailable. Still mildly annoying, but not as annoying as the iPhone refusing to let you access its filesystem at all.
First the default limited storage for apps. WebOS had the same problem up until about 6 months ago. That's just poor design and planning.
Then the choice of where to install apps being left to developers.
Last, the choice to expose a method for shuffling apps around. Sure it's nice to have because of the default limited space for apps. However the correct solution isn't to burden users with this low-level crap, but to fix the design so this kind of thing is unnecessary.
If they insist on supporting a removable SD card then they should install apps wherever there is room, perhaps notifying the user that if they remove the SD card then they will no longer be able to run apps installed to it.
It seems like a small thing, but these kinds of hacks pile up on each other and soon your left with a Windows-esque system where users are burdened with system maintenance crap instead of the device being more like an appliance that they can just use.
If a user goes to install an app and the device says there's no room when they have a 16GB SD card, most would just throw up their hands and think that it's broken, not that they should contact the developer of the app to request that they enable installation to SD cards, or that they should change the install location or whatever.
Then the choice of where to install apps being left to developers.
Yeah, I'm not thrilled about that. They have a point that some apps types fundamentally won't work well when run from the SD card, but I'd prefer it to be an opt-out rather than opt-in process.
>Apple's products have almost always been lagging in terms of spec sheet
This is incredibly untrue. The iPhone has dominated virtually every benchmark until very, very recently, owing to a more efficient CPU, and a vastly superior GPU (the Samsung Galaxy S is pretty much the only device that beats even the 3GS).
The iPhone is always talked up on the merits of its spec sheet, whether it's screen technology, case technology, GPU speed, browser speed, and on and on. This has always been its edge.
Mac hardware and iPods have indeed been lagging in terms of spec sheet for quite a while, so no, it's not "incredibly untrue." Note that there's also a difference between lagging in specs and talking up specs. When Apple talks about specs, it's almost always in comparison to previous Apple products. You'll never see them comparing the latest MacBook Pros to Alienware laptops.
Also, Apple has no qualms trumpeting better specs, but they frequently don't. The GPU, for instance, has been completely absent from iDevice discussion since the iPad. (It's part of the A4, but Apple doesn't tell you that.) They also failed to mention the RAM bump for the iPhone 4.
According to Wikipedia, over 200MM people had 3G phones before the iPhone even launched[1]. It wasn't for another year that Apple introduced the iPhone 3G.
Whether or not Apple wins or loses on specs (cf. the "I don't care" bear), they're winning big on overall experience, mindshare and ecosystem. Arguments about who has the best GPU misses the point when you can only play the newest, hottest games (or whatever) on the iPhone.
It's sort of like the argument about the Wii vs. the X360 and PS3 or the DS vs. the PSP. Who cares what the specs? The apps are driving the platform.
People trying to beat them on spec never will because it's not the game they're playing (at least not right now). They're building and selling user experience; it's the sum of the parts that makes them great, not the quality or performance of individual parts.