Comments on: Multitask-Masters: Hock vs. Alfke vs. Gruber

By: Rene Ritchie

Rene Ritchie — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:20:36 +0000

killphone.dll was probably not their brightest idea ever, granted.

By: cmaier

cmaier — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:15:31 +0000

There are lots of other reasons for WM instability. For example, it’s pretty easy to write bad code on WM.

By: Rene Ritchie

Rene Ritchie — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:14:37 +0000

Mine was running 5.bleh

And my Treo couldn't answer or make a phone call without white screening almost daily.

By: cmaier

cmaier — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:07:46 +0000

Actually when there's enough RAM (enough means about 128MB on WM) multi-tasking doesn't cause much problems at all. Surur

Agreed. After the first few versions of WM, they got it fairly stable (older versions used to run out of resource memory prior to running out of memory).

By: surur

surur — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:51:32 +0000

Although I think the point is that it doesn't work "well" from an end-user perspective on many other phones. I know my WinMob and even Treo became unstable as heck very quickly.

Actually when there's enough RAM (enough means about 128MB on WM) multi-tasking doesn't cause much problems at all.

Surur

By: Rene Ritchie

Rene Ritchie — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:45:38 +0000

Although I think the point is that it doesn’t work “well” from an end-user perspective on many other phones. I know my WinMob and even Treo became unstable as heck very quickly.

By: cmaier

cmaier — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 11:44:28 +0000

The “no swap space” thing is clearly incorrect. The principle is right – no matter how much memory the OS is taking, 128 MB is not a lot of headroom. However, other phone OS’s allow background processes even with 32MB or less available.

By: marcol

marcol — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 11:15:16 +0000

The iPhone only has just 128 MB of RAM and no swap space. A good chunk of that 128 MB goes to the OS itself and the built-in apps that do run in the background �€” Phone, Safari, and iPod.

Are there numbers for this somewhere? Would make Gruber’s argument easier to judge.

By: Rene Ritchie

Rene Ritchie — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 11:57:59 +0000

There is a theory (sometimes used to explain the apple mouse) that Jobs and Ive are so canny and correct so often, on the rare occasions they are wrong, the people around them just assume its them, and not Jobs et all who are mistaken. This is probably one of Apple's greatest weaknesses.

That they do change their minds and their course, except for that mouse(!), is one of their greatest strengths.

By: surur

surur — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 10:15:26 +0000

So Jobs (or any CEO) should never change their mind, even when wrong?

There seems to be an air of "Jobs knows best" when these decisions are handed up from up high, and all the Apple fanboys spend the rest of the time thinking up reasons why his benevolentness has protected Apple users from the horrors of the big bad world again.

Jobs has been wrong before, so when a controversial decision is made, maybe the default position should be scepticism vs faith.

Surur