Did we all just witness Windows start to die?

[persia]

I must admit Ice Cream Sandwich is pretty nice, you know an OS has come of age when it stops stealing ideas from Apple and Apple starts stealing ideas from it.

[nicholas]

I must admit Ice Cream Sandwich is pretty nice, you know an OS has come of age when it stops stealing ideas from Apple and Apple starts stealing ideas from it.

ICS 4.0 is nice but it's 3 versions ago.

Jelly Bean 4.3 is out now and looking pretty tasty indeed, even compared to the JB 4.2.2 I run on my ancient SGS2 and HTC Sensation phones.

I think the stealing is a good thing too, when they all start taking each others ideas and improving upon them (even if it's just a tiny little improvement) it means a better experience for all of us users no matter which OS we use.

Didn't Jobs say something like "Good artists copy, great artists steal!"?

Wise words, and usually I couldn't stand the man! lol

[persia]

Being mainly an Apple person I haven't gotten to use Jelly Bean too much, what are some of the best new features of Jelly Bean?

[nicholas]

Being mainly an Apple person I haven't gotten to use Jelly Bean too much, what are some of the best new features of Jelly Bean?

It's not slow is the main one.

I use CyanogenMod on my devices, even the wife and kids phone's and tablets so I'm not sure what are stock features and what aren't tbh.

[djos]

I had several iPhones then got a HTC WinPhone running 7.5 which was crap, interesting but ultimately crap. And then I got a HTC Sensation running GB2.3 which I hated and the morons took nearly 2 years just to update it to ICS4.0 which was too late for me as I only kept it for 6 months and ditched it for an iPhone4s which I bought outright.

I did have the HTC rooted and running ARHD 6.x for a while before the company I worked for banned rooted/JB'd smartphones from their network on pain of Job loss. I must say tho there is really nothing I miss from Droid at all - even if you gave me a choice between two identical smart phones and one was droid and the other was iOS, I'd take the iOS phone every day!

The iOS apps are better quality, the UI is polished and consistent, things "just work", iOS updates come direct from Apple with no delays imposed by OEM's and Carriers and your phone is fully supported with updates for at least 3 years. 95% of Droid handsets are literally abandonware - only a few elite models see any real OS update support!

[bbond007]

I think eventually x86 ond ARM will eventually converge on around the same power, price and performance per watt and then Windows RT will be irrelevant and will cease to exist.

Microsoft has the best development tools for business software, and there is a lot of momentum behind .NET. Legacy x86 software exits. etc.

Windows is not going anywhere...

[bbond007]

Being mainly an Apple person I haven't gotten to use Jelly Bean too much, what are some of the best new features of Jelly Bean?

running bitorrent client

I had iphone 1, 3 & 4 but switched to Galaxy S3 and the only thing i miss about the iPhone is how the voice mail works. Now I hate it when people leave me messages.

[Duce]

All Android phones are a pain in the ass if they come with manufacturer skins/bloatware.  Buy a Nexus or HTC One/S4 Google model, or just roll vanilla android onto whatever you have.  It's well worth it.  I found my last S3 damned near unusable with TouchWiz, but loved it with vanilla JB.  Cyanogen is a Godsend.

Vanilla Android I find just great.  I'll likely never go back to an iPhone.

[nicholas]

All Android phones are a pain in the ass if they come with manufacturer skins/bloatware.  Buy a Nexus or HTC One/S4 Google model, or just roll vanilla android onto whatever you have.  It's well worth it.  I found my last S3 damned near unusable with TouchWiz, but loved it with vanilla JB.  Cyanogen is a Godsend.

Vanilla Android I find just great.  I'll likely never go back to an iPhone.

No rooted Android device should be without LBE Security Master.

TOTAL control over app permissions and unlike the crappy implementation we had in CM7 that crashed apps when they were denied a permission it requested this "just works".

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=43644495&postcount=1616

Also you should install the F-Droid "app store" for OSS apps and install AdAway using it.

Both of these together make using Android a thoroughly pleasant experience!

https://f-droid.org/FDroid.apk

[Duce]

Very good points, Nicholas - and ones I should have raised myself, heh.  Always is security issues to be aware of when you start noodling around with custom ROM's and such.

Android isn't for everyone.  I still use an iPad on a day to day basis, mostly because a lot of my content (books and movies I enjoy re-reading/re-watching) are locked inside the Apple ecosystem.

A lot of people have terrible, terrible experiences with Android as a whole, and honestly, IMO - the single worst thing about Android is the fact that every different handset maker slaps their own goofy interface onto the darned devices, making the whole experience seem very fragmented and disjointed between different manufacturers.  I find vanilla Android, Jellybean in particular - to be just a killer mobile OS.  If for some reason I was forced to go back to Android with TouchWiz or a specific manufacturers skinned up variant of Android I'd probably rather use a feature phone, heh.

[nicholas]

Very good points, Nicholas - and ones I should have raised myself, heh.  Always is security issues to be aware of when you start noodling around with custom ROM's and such.

Android isn't for everyone.  I still use an iPad on a day to day basis, mostly because a lot of my content (books and movies I enjoy re-reading/re-watching) are locked inside the Apple ecosystem.

A lot of people have terrible, terrible experiences with Android as a whole, and honestly, IMO - the single worst thing about Android is the fact that every different handset maker slaps their own goofy interface onto the darned devices, making the whole experience seem very fragmented and disjointed between different manufacturers.  I find vanilla Android, Jellybean in particular - to be just a killer mobile OS.  If for some reason I was forced to go back to Android with TouchWiz or a specific manufacturers skinned up variant of Android I'd probably rather use a feature phone, heh.

I feel yoour pain.  Whenever my Dad (In his sixties) asks me for help with his SGS2 I get so annoyed with it as it's the stock Samsung Touchwiz ICS ROM on there and I'm so used to Cyanogen it really bugs the hell oout of me trying to find things in the settings.  Especially when he's asking me to help him "blind" over the landline so he can fix whatever problem he's having.

I would love to root it and install Cyanogen oon it for him but he uses the Sky Go app to watch sports and movies as he works 12hr night-shifts and the damn app refuses to work on rooted devices.

I did install the DTV India app for him as it has all the sport channels he needs but not the movie channels that he pays for as part of his Sky TV satellite subscription.

He is thinking of changing from Sky TV for Virgin Media Cable TV so hopefully when he does I'll be able to put CM10.1 on the phone for him at last as the Sky Go app is tied to his satelllite subscription so will no longer work.

On a related note my Mother-in-Law (Also in her sixties) has had an iPhone since the day it was released in 2007. She's never once installed an app on it nor has she upgraded the OS on it.  She uses it for phone calls, text messages, mobile Safari and nothing else whatsoever.

She might as well have a feature phone! lol

[bloodline]

Didn't Jobs say something like "Good artists copy, great artists steal!"?

Wise words, and usually I couldn't stand the man! lol

He did say it... But he stole it from someone else...

I have to say I really didn't like Jobs as a person (and reading his biography didn't help), but the one this I did like about him was the fact that it felt like he actually used the products Apple sold. No sense of committee or compromise, the product did exactly what he want and did it perfectly. And I have to be honest, that makes for a product that feels "better", despite not having all the wiz bang features one might want!

[psxphill]

All Android phones are a pain in the ass if they come with manufacturer skins/bloatware. Buy a Nexus or HTC One/S4 Google model, or just roll vanilla android onto whatever you have. It's well worth it. I found my last S3 damned near unusable with TouchWiz, but loved it with vanilla JB. Cyanogen is a Godsend.
 
Vanilla Android I find just great. I'll likely never go back to an iPhone.

It is annoying though. It'd be like ford selling a car that only had 1 forward gear and you had to take it to some back street garage to have a new gearbox fitted. Sure some people will do it, but most will just not buy the car in the first place.
 
The stupid thing is that they add all the stuff on it to differentiate. I would like one of them to differentiate by shipping AOSP (I always pick a phone on hardware and not software anyway, I look for the smallest phone with the best camera). Android development needs to mature though, there are too many kernel ports. There should be one source tree that can be built for all phones and you shouldn't have to choose what features you want to work and what bugs you are willing to live with.
 
I don't recommend hacking anything to anyone, I'll only help them if they come to me & they know the risks. With Android I wouldn't even recommend updating to the latest manufacturer supplied firmware, most people are happiest with the software that was on the phone when they bought it. Every manufacturer update is worse in terms of speed & stability.

[Megamig]

I love the effect new & current technology is having on the world..

Tablets/Touchscreens
Driving those with OCD insane every time they notice a fingerprint on the screen

Laptops/Notebooks (heat)
Keeping male fertility down who needs contraceptives these days.

[nicholas]

It is annoying though. It'd be like ford selling a car that only had 1 forward gear and you had to take it to some back street garage to have a new gearbox fitted. Sure some people will do it, but most will just not buy the car in the first place.
 
The stupid thing is that they add all the stuff on it to differentiate. I would like one of them to differentiate by shipping AOSP (I always pick a phone on hardware and not software anyway, I look for the smallest phone with the best camera). Android development needs to mature though, there are too many kernel ports. There should be one source tree that can be built for all phones and you shouldn't have to choose what features you want to work and what bugs you are willing to live with.
 
I don't recommend hacking anything to anyone, I'll only help them if they come to me & they know the risks. With Android I wouldn't even recommend updating to the latest manufacturer supplied firmware, most people are happiest with the software that was on the phone when they bought it. Every manufacturer update is worse in terms of speed & stability.

Just buy a Nexus device.

[djos]

Android claims to be more open than iOS but the reality is very different, Google have actually handed the carriers more power than they have ever had and the reality is iOS gives consumers a better deal with no carrier bloatware, no carrier controlled updates, no carrier branding uglifying your phone and you know what you get every time you buy an iDevice, a consistent apple user and support experiance.