Why is the Apple UI so fluid and ours isn't? - Page 2 - maemo.org

fatalsaint | # 11 | 2010-02-26, 18:28 | Report

(Couldn't help myself..)

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slender | # 12 | 2010-02-26, 18:29 | Report

Does someone really think that average consumer understands that because of multitasking UIs fluidity might not be on same level as on competitors products? Do people even recognize true multitasking? Do they appreciate it so much that they will not demand so much from UI speed? I doubt.

btw. Even single tasking is sometimes bit jerky (low fps on animations, animation stutters, slow rotation, kinetic scrolling in photo/albums) :|

Actually what Apple has made is quite clever. They can probably add true multitasking to their product at anytime. Has anyone really thought about that?

.edit
Had to add. That if you got slow UI then please try to remove widgets and reboot phone and see if it makes it faster.

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ogahyellow | # 13 | 2010-02-26, 18:29 | Report

My understanding is that the transitions & beauty are a 2 part effect on the iphone.

1 being that I have heard UI and interaction designers drive what the software engineers produce. So an application is drawn up from the UI, then coded to meet those needs. The UI is the primary consideration, not the functionality and that is why many apple programs lack "advanced" functionality, in an effort not to confuse grandma.

2. the transitions hide lag on the phone. For instance, a screen rotation does take computing power, and rather than just change screens a la s60, the transition makes the change appear graceful whilst hiding that the phone is processing the change.

3 Also, Jobs personally signs off on every product. Apple is his company and his personality and demands are legandary. I don't think Nokia has this personality to drive innovation in the entire company.

Realistically, what company would have 3 mobile OSs, 1 based on the Linux Kernel and decide it was a great time to come out with a Windows-based netbook? Looking at what other major players (Apple, Google, MS) are doing it is similar to Nokia. Apple has a full build of OSX on their Iphones & Ipod touches, Google developed Android & Chrome and is integrating them with their strong suit of online servies, MS is using .NET to simplify development across platforms.

Nokia has Trolltech & QT, but I think they were about 3 years late with that one. If the N900 beat the iPhone to market, we would probably be talking about Maemo as a major player. Instead, 3 years later, Maemo gets folded into Intel's moblin because it's so shitty from a development aspect. (Which will enrage some on here). But I can fire up Xcode on my Mac or Visual Studio (Student Edition) on a PC and be monkeying around in a few minutes. Android also has a nice toolkit. (I'm a beginner though, so I just like to play around and see if I can get something to load, or create a tiny app that can take care of a few boring regular tasks)

My experience with Maemo led me to give up before getting to "Hello World". I want to like Nokia. But in the US they suck, period. Intel will help them gain US visibility, but at what cost? Losing ARM chips in their phones most likely...don't think that's a great move.

Anyway sorry for the digression, but in a nutshell, I would say Apple has better designers and better QA. They stake their claim on the design of a product. Nokia based their claim on the hardware and "ol' reliable" S60. Womp womp.

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Double Salamander | # 14 | 2010-02-26, 18:30 | Report

Is it really the power which causes the UI feel not smooth?

I also had some more or less high end gaming PCs where I wondered why the GUI feels really slow and I can't believe that it was missing power that made me feel like this.

Spyker | # 15 | 2010-02-26, 18:30 | Report

Originally Posted by ysss View Post

1. Their PowerVR GPU is faster than the one on N900
2. Their screen runs at half N900's resolution
3. Their OS is somewhat optimized for singletasking with plenty of resources spared for UI (with some background-enabled apps)
4. I bet 'make the UI as fluid as possible' is one of Steve Jobs' prime directive to his team. So this has always been optimized and yet optimized more. It's always been like that since v1.0.

I also guess that the graphic stack of the iPhone is much simpler than X11+GTK+Clutter or X11+QT.
This is a true challenge to make a complete desktop Linux graphic stack running smoothly on a device like the N900... As it is not really optimized for.
Many embedded Linux devices simply use a framebuffer rendering stack which is much simpler.
We are clearly paying our Linux desktop app compatibility with lower graphic performance on the N900

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pepio | # 16 | 2010-02-26, 18:32 | Report

Originally Posted by IWantToMarryTheN900 View Post

How does it fare? Can someone comment on this?

It works but it's not nearly as good as the N900 (I just switched from the iPhone 3GS). You also have to remember that the iPhone OS has already been developed for more than 3 years!

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wmarone | # 17 | 2010-02-26, 18:32 | Report

Originally Posted by Spyker View Post

We are clearly paying our Linux desktop app compatibility with lower graphic performance on the N900

A trade-off I'll make, happily

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ysss | # 18 | 2010-02-26, 18:34 | Report

Originally Posted by IWantToMarryTheN900 View Post

So if the iPhone was to run at the N900's resolution (with the current chipset) it would stutter as well?

Actually, I don't think it would.

I'm guessing if you put Maemo5 on iPhone 3GS hardware, it would still stutter there.

But I wouldn't be surprised if N900's task switching gets optimized to get super smooth one day without any hardware changes.

Last edited by ysss; 2010-02-26 at 18:38.

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Enyibinakata | # 19 | 2010-02-26, 18:38 | Report

Originally Posted by wmarone View Post

Quite likely. It's the same for 3D games on the PC, lower resolutions can maintain higher framerates due to having fewer pixels to render. Higher resolutions require more powerful graphics cards to maintain higher framerates.

The biggest fluidity-killer is background processes (almost always Maemo system processes) that grab a chunk of the CPU to perform some action. Modest is very, very bad at this, especially when responding to a mail notification with a couple things are going on. This will be somewhat resolved once multi-core chips are more common, however.

will Maemo 6 / Meego support multicore Arm A9 ?. Symbian 3 supports it already.

slender | # 20 | 2010-02-26, 18:39 | Report

Originally Posted by pepio View Post

....You also have to remember that the iPhone OS has already been developed for more than 3 years!

I do not understand this point of view here. Also when people talk about apps then someone shows again this card.

I just doubt that people saying this do not really understand how customers behave.

I would like to say to people who like to remember us about how long it took from competitor x to be on level y that think yourselves in boots of salesman who tries to sell N900. Think how that sentence would sound then? Just horrible :|

Last edited by slender; 2010-02-26 at 19:05.