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Forums - Gaming Discussion - WWDC 2012 keynote roundup. Thanks superchunk!

rocketpig said:
superchunk said:

They are with Android 4 ICS and beyond. I don't remember the exact time, I think it is they have a couple months to get the update out and it must be supported for two years or something like that. However, that's the big changes with ICS. That's why OEMs flavors of ICS are massively toned down from previous versions. That's why they are not allowed to change the menu system, etc.

That is excellent news. I'm glad Google is at least making attempts to fix the problem.

Of course they are. Every ecosystem grows and matures. Every iteration brings new stuff. ICS is fucking bad ass with ton's of better UI features.



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ethomaz said:

smbu2000 said:

Both are good though it really depends on what you plan to do with it. I don't have the new MBA, but I do have  13" mid-2011 MBA (Sandy Bridge); 1.7ghz i5, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD.  Very light and portable, not that great for 3d gaming as it has an integrated graphics card, although the newer MBA should improve a bit on that. It's great for when you have to do a lot of typing/editing/etc on it and the SSD really makes it fly.

The 11" MBA is even lighter and more portable and has a beefier cpu as well as 4GB RAM standard now. (2011 11" MBA had 2GB) The 13" has excellent battery life at 7hrs, but the 11" isn't too shabby at 5hrs.

I also have the new Ipad (2012; 64GB WiFi) and it is really great for all around things. The Retina display is gorgeous and it is very handy to have around and very portable. Battery life is also great at ~10hrs and I usually just leave it on all the time.

Thank you for sharing your experiences.

I'm more inclined to get the new MBA 2012 soon but it's way more expensive.

The filesystem and the keyboard is important for me. I have to waste more time with iPad too but I thing there are things I can't do with it.

Sorry for replying so late. The MBA is a really nice machine. I'm not sure whether you are looking at the 11" or the 13" model. The screen resolution on both is pretty good as well, the 11" MBA has a slightly higher resolution screen than the 13" MBP (1366x768 vs 1280x800) and the the 13" MBA has the same screen resolution as the 15" MBP (1440x900, the older one not the new Retina MBP), so there is plenty of usable space. 11" has a 16:9 aspect ratio and the 13" has a 16:10 aspect ratio.

In addition to improving the cpu (base model performs better than the upgraded 2011 model) and gpu, they added USB3 slots (Intel finally included native USB3 support with Ivy Bridge), a better integrated camera (was 480P, now it's 720P HD). They actually lowered the price a bit as well for this years model. (down $100 USD I believe, not sure about other countries)

The MBA is very light (11": 2.38lbs/1.08kg or 13": 2.96lbs/1.35kg) and very easy to carry around. I can throw mine in my backpack and not really worry about it. The keyboard is nice (it lights up) and is great for doing work on it. (Much easier than typing on an iPad, heh.)

If you haven't used a laptop with an SSD in it, it makes things so much quicker compared to a standard hdd. The trade-off is storage space of course, but I just have an external usb hdd for when I need extra space (or to transfer stuff from my desktop PC.) Using the MBA with a SSD is what made me buy a SSD for my desktop!

The MBA is a great machine to work on. The only way I could ever see myself getting rid of my MBA, was if I was getting the new Retina MBP. ;-p




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smbu2000 said:

Sorry for replying so late. The MBA is a really nice machine. I'm not sure whether you are looking at the 11" or the 13" model. The screen resolution on both is pretty good as well, the 11" MBA has a slightly higher resolution screen than the 13" MBP (1366x768 vs 1280x800) and the the 13" MBA has the same screen resolution as the 15" MBP (1440x900, the older one not the new Retina MBP), so there is plenty of usable space. 11" has a 16:9 aspect ratio and the 13" has a 16:10 aspect ratio.

In addition to improving the cpu (base model performs better than the upgraded 2011 model) and gpu, they added USB3 slots (Intel finally included native USB3 support with Ivy Bridge), a better integrated camera (was 480P, now it's 720P HD). They actually lowered the price a bit as well for this years model. (down $100 USD I believe, not sure about other countries)

The MBA is very light (11": 2.38lbs/1.08kg or 13": 2.96lbs/1.35kg) and very easy to carry around. I can throw mine in my backpack and not really worry about it. The keyboard is nice (it lights up) and is great for doing work on it. (Much easier than typing on an iPad, heh.)

If you haven't used a laptop with an SSD in it, it makes things so much quicker compared to a standard hdd. The trade-off is storage space of course, but I just have an external usb hdd for when I need extra space (or to transfer stuff from my desktop PC.) Using the MBA with a SSD is what made me buy a SSD for my desktop!

The MBA is a great machine to work on. The only way I could ever see myself getting rid of my MBA, was if I was getting the new Retina MBP. ;-p

And that's pretty much the same review I've heard from anyone I know who bought a MBA. Even my non-Apple friends have thrown around phrases like "best laptop I've ever seen" and "holy shit, this thing is awesome". It's one of the finest computers ever built, if not the finest. Truly a remarkable machine and I'm glad that Apple has extended the form factor to 15" screens. 13" is just too small for me so I never sprung for the MBA in favor of staying with the MBP line. That will change with my next update in a year or so (I'm running a Sandy Bridge i7 machine, no legitimate reason for me to upgrade at this point) as I'm sure I will get the new 15" MBP thin.




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superchunk said:
rocketpig said:
superchunk said:

They are with Android 4 ICS and beyond. I don't remember the exact time, I think it is they have a couple months to get the update out and it must be supported for two years or something like that. However, that's the big changes with ICS. That's why OEMs flavors of ICS are massively toned down from previous versions. That's why they are not allowed to change the menu system, etc.

That is excellent news. I'm glad Google is at least making attempts to fix the problem.

Of course they are. Every ecosystem grows and matures. Every iteration brings new stuff. ICS is fucking bad ass with ton's of better UI features.


this is a bit off topic, but it does have to do with what Apple showed at WWDC.

When they brought up their pie chart of iOS5 adoption and compared it to Android, I was amazed by how many Android users were still on 2.1 and 2.2. Why are they? You mentioned something about it not being mandatory to update the phones, can you explain it a little more please :)



TeddostheFireKing said:


this is a bit off topic, but it does have to do with what Apple showed at WWDC.

When they brought up their pie chart of iOS5 adoption and compared it to Android, I was amazed by how many Android users were still on 2.1 and 2.2. Why are they? You mentioned something about it not being mandatory to update the phones, can you explain it a little more please :)


If you go out and buy a low-end product you get low-end support and features.

Example: yesterday I bought a HTC Droid Incredible 2 for my mother-n-law. It was a free phone with upgrade, single core, but otherwise really nice phone and a major upgrade from her Blackberry 8330 Curve I gave her two years ago. HTC currently has it listed as TBA to get 4.0 ICS while every other phone they've made in the last year and half will get ICS by the end of July. Its currently on the last phone OS, Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread. It very well may never get ICS and for the next two years will ring up in Android's pie chart as a 2.3.5 device.

Same goes with tablets. There are a lot of $99 to $199 tablets that were on 2.x and will stay that way as the no-name OEM has no interest in providing updates.

Android simply has too many devices with a near infinite different set of screens, cpu, gpu, keyboards, sizes, etc to allow it to have 100% updates. The bigger companies like HTC, Moto, and Samsung do try to update their higher end phones and Google (with the introduction of Android 4.0 ICS) has implemented a mandatory upgrade timeline. But, it will take a few years to have those lower end phones die off and be replaced.

What I find amazing is that people hang on to phones longer than two years and fail to take advantage of the upgrade to new free or cheap phones that are far better than what they have. You're already paying for the service and likely to not leave, why not upgrade? If people did that regularly then there would probably be no 2.1 or 2.2 phones. Though there would still be 2.2 tablets from even just last xmas shopping season of cheapos.

We are now seeing the same thing in iOS btw. Now that Apple has put out more than 4 phones, many features and entire OS upgrades are not on the older phones. Sure those are four year old products, but there is a big difference in putting out one phone a year and one every month.



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thanks Superchunk, that really helped :)



superchunk said:

We are now seeing the same thing in iOS btw. Now that Apple has put out more than 4 phones, many features and entire OS upgrades are not on the older phones. Sure those are four year old products, but there is a big difference in putting out one phone a year and one every month.

iOS'es fragmentation is nearly non-existent. Right now, a little over 80% of users are on iOS5. By the time iOS6 rolls around, that number will probably be at 85% or better. Apple didn't release OTA updates until iOS5 so I'm sure that's slowing some users down a bit. Moving forward, I think iOS6 be right back at 90% saturation when iOS7 is due to release. No matter what a company does, some users will retain an old OS because their phone is jailbroken, because they fear updates, or because they're just incompetent and can't use their own device. Anything over 75% is good. Anything over 90% is awesome. Apple usually ends up somewhere close to 90% by the time the next update is ready.

From a developer standpoint, features (or lack thereof) are easy to workaround on older phones. What's important is not having to test on multiple operating systems. Apple has done an extremely good job of making sure that developers have as many tools as possible to make their apps run on as many devices as possible.




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rocketpig said:
superchunk said:

We are now seeing the same thing in iOS btw. Now that Apple has put out more than 4 phones, many features and entire OS upgrades are not on the older phones. Sure those are four year old products, but there is a big difference in putting out one phone a year and one every month.

iOS'es fragmentation is nearly non-existent. Right now, a little over 80% of users are on iOS5. By the time iOS6 rolls around, that number will probably be at 85% or better. Apple didn't release OTA updates until iOS5 so I'm sure that's slowing some users down a bit. Moving forward, I think iOS6 be right back at 90% saturation when iOS7 is due to release. No matter what a company does, some users will retain an old OS because their phone is jailbroken, because they fear updates, or because they're just incompetent and can't use their own device. Anything over 75% is good. Anything over 90% is awesome. Apple usually ends up somewhere close to 90% by the time the next update is ready.

From a developer standpoint, features (or lack thereof) are easy to workaround on older phones. What's important is not having to test on multiple operating systems. Apple has done an extremely good job of making sure that developers have as many tools as possible to make their apps run on as many devices as possible.


As I mentioned is like comparing apples to oranges. Having one product a year makes it very easy to keep the OS on all devices. Its really nothing that great or negative. It just depends on who you are and what you want.

Since iOS is popular due to iPhone iPod and now iPad, a dev an make a lot of money and have relatively easier, but higher up front cost, by starting with iOS and since Android is massive on clearly king of marketshare, they can have no up front cost and a longer dev / test cycle.

A consumer has far more freedom of choice, not only in hardware, but with software configuration and personalization with Android, but with iOS they have a simple standard that will be kept in the loop for at least three or more years. However, even with that you lose some stuff. Like Siri and various other new features that will come out over time. Apple may choose to not allow even a one year old product to have it. There is no technical reason Siri couldn't have been on iPhone 4 and various iTouch/iPod devices, but it wasn't.



superchunk said:

There is no technical reason Siri couldn't have been on iPhone 4 and various iTouch/iPod devices, but it wasn't.

Actually, there was. There is hardware built into the 4S chipset that is specifically for noise-cancelling background noise. Siri would technically work on iPhone 4 but it won't work well (as people who have Jailbroken their iPhone 4's and used Siri can testify). The hardware doesn't meet Apple's requirements for the service. They could have put it on the device but Apple errs on the side of caution and would rather not have a feature on a device than have one that works poorly. It's not a perfect scenario but I understand their decision, though it kinda sucks for iPhone 4 owners.




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superchunk said:

Since iOS is popular due to iPhone iPod and now iPad, a dev an make a lot of money and have relatively easier, but higher up front cost, by starting with iOS and since Android is massive on clearly king of marketshare, they can have no up front cost and a longer dev / test cycle.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you claiming that initial development cost is higher on iOS than Android?




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