Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 4th Jun 2009 11:57 UTC
The Palm Pre will hit the stores on Saturday, June 6, and it has a very important task to fulfil. Contrary to what the sensationlist media want you to believe, that task is not to dethrone the iPhone, but to save a flailing company. Palm requires for its very survival that the Pre and its brand-new operating system webOS is a success. CNet has taken the Palm Pre through its paces, and despite some flaws, they were quite pleased, especially on the software front. Update: Another review, from Engadget: "To put it simply, the Pre is a great phone, and we don't feel any hesitation saying that."
Thread beginning with comment 366987
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
RE: Multitask & Battery Life
by memson on Thu 4th Jun 2009 13:21
in reply to "Multitask & Battery Life"
Member since:2006-01-01
Multitasking does use more battery life. It's not a "lie". The more the processor is in a non idle state, the more battery power it uses. Most mobile processors (such as the ARM class processor in the iPhone) will go in to a low power idle state when not being used.. this runs just the bare essential processes to keep the OS running. If your processor can't sleep, it will draw power constantly. This will use up your charge more quickly, hence worse battery life.
RE[2]: Multitask & Battery Life
by kragil on Thu 4th Jun 2009 14:03
in reply to "RE: Multitask & Battery Life"
Member since:2006-01-04
Running in the background != multitasking
In theory tasks that run in the background can effect battery life. Practice has shown many times it doesn't effect battery life significantly.
And btw: I recently got my old MDA Compact (HTC Magician) back. It runs WinMo 2003. The UI is crap but I is able to multitask just fine. And battery life isn't effected by how many apps you run. They all just sleep when you don't use the phone.
Edit: Much better review:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/03/palm-pre-review/
Edited 2009-06-04 14:07 UTC
RE: Multitask & Battery Life
by sanctus on Thu 4th Jun 2009 14:01
in reply to "Multitask & Battery Life"
Member since:2005-08-31
RE: Multitask & Battery Life
by chiwaw on Fri 5th Jun 2009 18:28
in reply to "Multitask & Battery Life"
Member since:2006-02-05
As strange as you might think of my opinion, I actually *really* appreciate the fact that iPhone OS is *not* multitasking. I used WinMo for years until I changed for an iPhone last year. The one thing I hated the most with WinMo was precisely the fact that it would multitask by default, keeping apps running even when I quit them or switch to an other app, slowing the whole machine down, increasing instabilities, etc.
I love the fact that when I want to run an app on my iPhone, it has all the resources possible offered by the hardware, and I cross my fingers that Apple will NOT fall for the pressure to make iPhone OS a multitask one.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.More News »
Sponsored Links
Member since:
2006-01-04
Everybody knows that that is just a lie only Apple fanboys believe.
Not to multitask was a design decision.