Posts by jack jack

Google begins to roll out Lollipop to Nexus devices

We'll never get longer lasting batteries...

It's pretty simple really.. same reason why electric car batteries don't give you 1000 mile ranges with 15 minute charges... battery technology is disruptive to other markets, namely, the oil industry. If we could build a battery that keeps a phone running for a couple weeks, we could build a battery to give a car 1000+ mile ranges which is more than enough to drive for 15 hours or longer before needing to charge for a couple hours. What happens to the oil market when we no longer need gas to power our cars?

I think it will eventually happen, but I suspect it will be years from now as we ween off of oil before we have batteries that can last a week or two without a charge. Maybe they'll add perpetual motion chargers to phones and require you to shake them to keep the screen on...

I do agree though, while more speed, memory, better screens, etc is all nice, it's all minute compared to a phone that doesn't need to be charged one or more times a day. We carry portable rechargeable batteries that weigh 10x the phone just to ensure our dying batteries on our year-old phones can be used throughout the day.

Acer releases second-gen Android tablet

Same specs.. seriously?

So, Acer, just like Motorolla with the Xoom 2, is releasing almost an identical device as what they already have out now, calling it "new" and slapping a few minor improvements? See.. this might work with an iPad.. everyone wants one. But Acer, Xoom and the likes all have an uphill battle right now trying to get people to buy them, especially at the $400+ price point they are coming in at. I'd be shocked if this thing sells, 10,000 units. It seems to me it's just a way to milk the decent original Acer tablet.

Meanwhile, you have Asus Transformer 2 coming out in 2 weeks with quad-core, brighter display and can still be docked for more storage/battery life and connections. Why would anyone buy the Acer 200 or xoom 2 with the Transformer 2 at the same price with so much more to offer?

I wonder how many are going to be fired at Acer for thinking this makes sense. Did Asus get some sort of special deal with nVidia to be the only Tegra 3 quad-core released or something? If I were Acer and Motorolla, I'd push back their devices until they can release quad-cores with more improvements.

Microsoft's past - the future to Android's iPhone victory

Java is not slower than native

For all you that keep saying apple -> native is faster than Android -> Java/JVM, you clearly are the same people responsible for spreading the FUD about how slow Java is after all these years. Java, years ago, was slow. It's made VAST improvements and in most cases is as fast as native, in some cases it's proven to be quite a bit faster, and in a few select areas, not so much. I would not use Java for life support systems software, or time critical such as device drivers. However, the JVM with it's JIT monitors and optimizes code in real-time as it runs and figures out what is running slow and speeds it up. Native code does nothing of the sort. If native is so much better why do more than 1/2 of the large scale enterprises and most of small to medium sized businesses trust their business to Java on the back end? Please, stop with the Java is slow fud. It's hardly the case. Most apps on Android run just as fast as they do on iPhone.

Android has a MUCH larger reach, and impact than apple's OS. By this I mean, google has to be concerned with just about every phone manufacturer out there using their platform, as well as tablets, set top boxes and more. Apple has two devices, the tablet and the phone, to worry about. For that reason android is going to take longer to mature and round out the features. Thus, we are not seeing as big a push by the android team to get better native support for games, for example. The latest 2.2 update comes a long way in helping out apps and games, but still, apple's native layer for games is going to beat android right now. As an android developer this is probably the most shocking thing to me as games are about 40% of the apple market, I would think they would put a LOT more resources on getting that segment of the architecture working better. Music apps is another area that android just can't come close in competing in. The audio latency is so bad, you can't tape the screen and get an immediate sound very easily with Android. Forget drum machine apps and such.

It's just a matter of time before it gets all that in there. But really, the native to Java comparison has to stop. There are always tradeoffs. Java is far easier to develop in than xcode. The tools are set up and ready to develop in about 5 minutes. I've developed in both and gave up on apple.