iOS fragmentation - Is it worse than Android's?

How do we define fragmentation?

This is what fragmentation (frgmn-tshn) actually means:
The scattering of parts of a computer file across different regions of a disk. Fragmentation occurs when the operating system breaks up the file and stores it in locations left vacant by previously deleted files. The more fragmented the file, the slower it is to retrieve, since each piece of the file must be identified and located on the disk.

Below we will try to explain the FUD term propagated by Steve Jobs and spread by Apple fans that also have a very vague idea of it's meaning.

• the inability to update the OS because of the manufacturer?
• the user's choice not to update?
• the coexistence of multiple app stores?
• exclusive apps?
• different hardware configurations?

So let's start with updates

    If we are to consider updates as the sole factor in fragmentation, we would certainly be wrong. Both Android and iOS can run the same Apps. Forcing partial updates like iOS 4 on iPhone 3G and 3GS has lowered the device performance considerably while still not bringing the same features iPhone 4 had. Apple might have reduced fragmentation in statistics, but it has decreased user experience by making 3G and 3GS laggy devices.

So how are iPhone updates doing in 2011?
According to statistics, not too well. So far iOS 5 is only on 38% of all iPhones:

"According to Chitika Insights, one month after release, the new OS is on 38 percent of iPhones, 30 percent of iPads and 12 percent of iPod Touch.

iOS5 distribution in 2011

 The firm uses mobile ad network impressions to analyze traffic."

In comparison, Android's latest major distribution for Phones 2.x.x is spread across 95% of the devices, and the latest subversion, Gingerbread or 2.3.x is spread across 38.2% of the devices.

We should also mention that Android has a market share or 52.5% while Apple has a market of ~15%. Given the fact that there are 443 unique Android devices released and only 7 iPhones, I'd say Apple's closed eco-system idea is doing a lot worse in the real world than it did on paper.

iPhone 4S: Antennagate, check! Brain damage, check!

iFixed nothing

    Apple claims that the iPhone 4S features a new antenna design, intended to prevent any risk of 'Antennagate' reoccurring. But did they really fix or innovate anything? Let's start with fixing things. In the mockup on the right you can see that by "not holding it right" you are shorting 3 of iPhone 4S's antennas and you will be jamming the forth one once the phone touches your ear.

   The 4S's new dual antennas can automatically switch when sending and receiving information, a trick Apple claims is "a first" for a mobile phone.

    We won't go into explaining the dangers of SAR and why most manufacturers place the antenna on the bottom of the phone, away from your brain. You should know though that at any given time the best working antenna on iPhone 4S will be the one on top since it's the only one not shorted, it's the one the device will choose for best signal. It's right there next to your gray matter where most of the SAR radiation will dissipate.

   Frølund Pedersen, professor at Aalborg University's Institute for Electronic Systems in Denmark and one of the big names involved in the events of Antennagate last time around, feels that Apple's latest iPhone might be treading on toes stems from patents he and his associates apparently sold to Samsung some years earlier.

At the iPhone 4S launch, CEO Tim C(r)ook and co were quoted as saying,

“Improving on the innovative stainless steel external, dual-antenna design of iPhone 4, iPhone 4S is the first phone to intelligently switch between two antennas to send and receive.”

Pedersen disagrees, primarily with the fact that Apple dubbed this an 'innovation',

"When Apple says that it is new, it’s not true. It has been in use for very long. For example in the DECT cordless phones. Both in these and in some other phones“

iPad: recommended age 12 and below

    With Black Friday rapidly approaching, parents may want to get up early Friday morning to find deals, as a recent survey shows their kids are eyeing some wallet-stretching electronics this holiday season.

    Across a multitude of electronic offerings, the Apple iPad leads all devices (31% interest in future purchase) among American kids ages 6-12. Apple’s iPod Touch is also popular choice among kids, generating similar levels of interest as computers.

    However kids above 13 and teenagers are far less interested in Apple devices, as the PC and smartphone are ranked in the top.

Apple personal information free give-away. Snoop it while it's hot!

    Hidden in music files gotten from iTunes is  all the information needed to identify you. You won’t find it disclosed in their published terms of use. It’s nowhere in the support documentation. There’s no mention in the digital receipt. Consumers are largely oblivious to this, but it could have future ramifications as the music industry takes another stab at locking down music files.

    Here’s how it works: Apple knows your private data; before making the song available for download their software embeds into the file either an account name or a transaction number or both. Once downloaded, the file has squirreled away this personal information in a manner where you can’t easily see it, but if someone knows where to look they can. This information doesn’t affect the audio fidelity, but it does permanently attach to the file data which can be used to trace back to the original purchaser which could be used at a later date.

    As usual Apple refused comment on the matter, but there’s ample proof of what’s transpiring. Using simple file comparison tools it’s possible to verify this behavior by purchasing identical songs using different accounts and see if they match. This unfortunately applies to both purchased and free music you might have gotten from the iStore - even if it's DRM free!

And you thought you were "cool" because your iPhone has a Mercedes app...

     Well you're wrong! Unfortunately our beloved iPhone doesn't support Remote SIM Access Profile (rSAP) and it looks like rich people really like rSAP. Steve Jobs apologizes for not making you feel socially elevated enough.

     rSAP is a Bluetooth service present in all smartphones (hint: not iPhone) and on-board computers, depending on what options you chose for your car, that allows the following:

• devices such as car phones with built in GSM transceivers can connect to a SIM card in a phone with Bluetooth, thus the car phone itself doesn't require a separate SIM card 
• keeps on that pesky connection, that turns off all the time
• works seamlessly with built in hands-free kits
• media streaming
• displaying the GPS program from your mobile device on the on-board screen
• integrates GSM controls on-board or with the touch screen (of the car of course)

Mercedes-Benz's mbrace iPhone app allows:

Did you know why you own an iPhone?

     Reality distortion field (RDF) is a term coined by Bud Tribble at Apple Inc. in 1981, to describe company co-founder Steve Jobs' charisma and its effects on the developers working on the Mac project. Later the term has also been used to refer to perceptions of his keynote (or Stevenote) by observers and devoted users of Apple computers and products.

     In essence, RDF is the idea that Steve Jobs is able to convince himself and others to believe almost anything with a mix of charm, charisma, bluster, exaggeration, marketing and persistence. RDF is said to distort an audience's sense of proportion or scale. Small advances are applauded as breakthroughs. Interesting developments become turning points, or huge leaps forward. Impossible-seeming schedules, requirements or specifications are acceded to. Snap judgments about technical merits of approaches are sometimes reversed without acknowledgment. Those who use the term RDF contend that it is not an example of outright deception but more a case of warping the powers of judgment. The term "audience" may refer to an individual whose attitudes Steve is intending to affect.

      Often the term is used as a derogatory remark to criticize Apple's products and its more enthusiastic fans.

The term has extended in industry to other managers and leaders, who try to convince their employees to become passionately committed to projects, sometimes without regard to the overall product or to competitive forces in the marketplace. It also has been used with regard to hype for products that are not necessarily connected with any one person.

There is no spoon

     Fake Steve Jobs on the iPhone 4 and reception: Probably the biggest thing I've taught the team at Apple is that people never know what they're supposed to think about anything. This is true in Hollywood, in the book business, in the art world, in politics. And especially in technology. So we put out a new phone and everyone is sitting there wondering what they should think about it. What I realized many years ago - and honestly, it still amazes me - is that most people are so unsure of themselves that they will think whatever we tell them to think. So we tell people that this new phone is not just an incremental upgrade, but rather is the biggest breakthrough since the original iPhone in 2007. We say it's incredible, amazing, awesome, mind-blowing, overwhelming, magical, revolutionary. We use these words over and over. It's all patently ridiculous, of course. But people believe it.

We demo FaceTime, and we say that nobody in the world has ever seen anything like this before. Jonny and I act stunned and gob-smacked, as if we ourselves still can't believe that we've just invented video chat.

Again, this is utterly untrue, a total and absolute lie. But people accept it. They hoot and cheer for us.

      The other strategy we use is "clouding". Right now, for example, we've sent out the following messages about iPhone 4 and the antenna issues:

Apple lies again, probably bribed Consumer Reports

      In an unprecedented turn of events Consumer Reports came back on on their initial decision of not recommending an iPhone, recommending it but with the use of a bumper. How much Apple paid for that is probably a thing we'll never find out.

        It has already been reported that not even the bumper case can alleviate the reception issue! Check the video below and notice how iPhone 4 loses all it's bars even with the "magical" bumper case on. Even if the bumper would provide a fix, the fact that it's not built in is completely wrong!

The iPhone AppStore myth

    A ridiculous race is going on in the world of smartphones, with each competitor boasting about the number of available apps for his platform. Apple is talking about 200.000 apps, similar to Symbian and probably what Palm used to offer in earlier years. As a software developer and user I'm having a hard time believing the programming upsurge Apple is talking about. It is high time to debunk the app numbers craze as a high number of apps reflects the shortcomings of a platform as much as its mass market success. 

    This article mainly looks at the iPhone AppStore (and you should too), however it looks like the beginning of a trend as the situation with Android is quite similar; we'll just have to wait and see what Microsoft & WinMo are going to do.

    One in six apps in the iPhone AppStore is an eBook. “Jane Eyre” alone is available through over a hundred apps. How ridiculous is this? Taking an eBook and packing it into an app? 36.000 books as individual apps?
On "older" platforms as well a on your PC or MAC you get good e-book readers, then you simply download whatever free e-book you want. Yes, no paid eBooks (no DRM) yet, but 30.000 eBooks alone from Project Gutenberg, downloadable through the default browser. However due to the well known censorship such applications usually never find their way into the AppStore (see Eucalyptus). To this you can surely add another 16.000 audiobooks since yet again a simple audiobook player would really hurt the numbers and it's easier to install and uninstall apps than to copy and delete an mp3 file... right!

   One in six apps is a game. Some of them are absolutely fantastic, innovative and close to the PSP ones regarding graphics(control is another story) while most many others are imitations, variant 283 of Tetris or Bejeweled, crude mini-games, free, lite and full versions of the same game, and quite often Flash or old JAVA games ported and rebranded. Unfortunately in this situation independent companies and studios (eg. not EA games) have no chance of ever getting noticed or downloaded. My collection of nice 3D games sums up to roughly a dozen - heck, even a good variant of Tetris is hard to find!

Well, if you consider a platform that has:

• e-book readers
• flash support
  
  

iPhone 4G - An outdated design or just an outdated ripoff?

    For those of you familiar with the mobile world the N800(on the left) or N810(N900's predecessor) are some of the best tablets ever created by Nokia back in 2007. However, the resemblance with the iPhone 4G is astonishing if you keep in mind that the N810 if you notice the 4G is also more tilted in the picture above.
   Before saying how thick N800/N810 is consider that it also packs a full qwerty, stereo speakers, a kickstand, a stylus, a removable battery and it was designed 3 years ago.

     We also want to remind you Apple is involved in countless patent lawsuits, with with almost every single GSM manufacturer on the planet - "awkwardly" all GSM companies hold more patents against Apple (eg. Nokia has 24 claims against Apple which only has only has 13) - the importance is not ours to judge but the older you are in a business the more likely it is for you to own the most relevant patents. The outcome of this will certainly be an interesting one.

   After three years of delivering virtually the same design, you come up with this edgy design? I know edgy was a trend in cars around the 80s, but this is 2010! Wake up Apple, is that all you can do?

    This is what the young Steve Jobs had to add:

iPad early adopters are fanboys - statistically speaking

Greg Packer, America's fanboy #1, first in line for the iPhone
Remember kids, you''ll grow up to be just like him!

     Research firm Piper Jaffray has released a survey today that includes the results of 448 launch day iPad buyers, and it appears that most are what could be considered Apple "fanboys."

    74 percent of the buyers were current Mac users, and 96 percent of those were completely satisfied with their Mac computers.

    66 percent of the buyers own iPhones. 13 percent owned Amazon Kindle e-readers but 58 percent were set to replace it with the iPad.

    The most popular model purchased was the cheap $499 16GB model, at 39 percent of all buys, followed by the more expensive 32GB model at 32 percent.

Read more »

    74 percent of all buyers will use the iPad for Internet surfing, with 38 percent using the device for e-book reading, according to the chart below:

Via Aftererdawn

Trying To Fight Weak Sales, Apple Prepares iPhone With WiFi In China

       The iPhone has been a flop in Asia, only selling around 200,000 units in its first quarter in the country. One reason: It doesn't have WiFi, while grey market versions of the phone do.

      Apple's Chinese partner, China Unicom, tells the WSJ that could change.

     China Unicom's CEO hinted Apple is preparing to ship an iPhone with WiFi in it, but he didn't say when.

When Apple first entered the Chinese market, regulations barred cellphones from having WiFi. Instead, the phones had to have a Chinese standard called WAPI.

     After Apple redesigned its phone to include this standard, China changed the regulation so that phones with WAPI could also have WiFi. By the time the regulations had changed it was too late, Apple had manufactured phones without WiFi.

     It looks like the next version will have WiFi, which ought to help sales, at least a little bit.

Overall though, we don't think this sends sales to the moon. Apple still has a high price tag on the phone. And it will still be competing with the grey market.

Via: Business Insider