Samsung adds multi-window to its Android devices
Linked by the_randymon on Tue 29th Jan 2013 01:23 UTC
PDAs, Cellphones, Wireless "Samsung's recent Android 4.1.2 upgrade for the Galaxy Note 10.1 adds power and flexibility to the company's unique offering of Android multiwindowing features. With this update, the Galaxy Note 10.1 can run up to 16 multiwindow-enabled Android apps at once, Windows/Mac-like, on a single screen. Apps endowed with Samsung's multiwindow technology are usable in three viewing modes: full screen, dual view, and cascade view." There are already some complaining this represents a dangerous fork of Android. I thinks it's a step in the right direction.
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RE[10]: Comment by Laurence
by some1 on Wed 30th Jan 2013 23:26 UTC in reply to "RE[9]: Comment by Laurence"
some1
Member since:
2010-10-05

I think we're both missing the point to be honest. But that's what happens when any discussion on here reaches this many replies.

Agreed.

I hadn't forgotten that Google is an app developer. I've just not used their apps at that high a resolution before and, until just now, nobody had mentioned that problem.

That was my point all along: Google didn't really optimize their own apps for 10", and it will take a long time till most apps in the store will be optimized. Some apps just don't have enough content to put on 10". A number of iPad apps I've seen just put a large image on the background: good if you just use it as a fancy photo frame, bad if you want the most of your device.
Some OS level solution like tiling can improve things for many apps without developers spending their time on it, or spending less time. It may not be perfect or work for every app, or be the top thing Android needs, but it's a useful thing to have.

My point was quite clear when I said you were making a mountain out of a molehill. You're basically bitching about trivial things.

Except that I'm not bitching. You're bitching at Samsung. I'm saying their goal is right, and the implementation will improve. In pretty much every category Samsung starts with crappy products and works their way up to being among the best for the money.

* a clampdown on malware (I'm not even sure how Google would go about this, but there is a serious issue there)
* fixing their abysmal emulator in the SDK
* addressing the fragmentation issue (and I don't mean stopping companies like Samsung from adding Windowing - I mean companies shipping incompatible ROMs)

IIUC Google is working on all of these.

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[11]: Comment by Laurence
by Laurence on Thu 31st Jan 2013 09:37 in reply to "RE[10]: Comment by Laurence"
Laurence Member since:
2007-03-26

That was my point all along: Google didn't really optimize their own apps for 10", and it will take a long time till most apps in the store will be optimized.

With the greatest of respect, you really didn't make that point clear at all.

You kept talking about Google and Android but never once mentioned any of Google's apps, so the context of your complaint seemed to be about Android itself rather than Google's apps on Android.

In all honesty, I probably wouldn't have argued with you had I realised this ;)

Some OS level solution like tiling can improve things for many apps without developers spending their time on it,

I know I'm nitpicking here, but that might actually cause more work for developers as they'd have to rewrite any code that didn't expect app sizes to change mid-execution (ie at the moment you can expect screen size to be static. but now they'd have to write the app so that it dynamically changes the layout while the app is running).

Also, in the SDK itself, I'd have expected the tile size functions to be different to the screen size functions, so there might potentially be a huge can of worms in implementing such a 'minor' feature:
* apps wanting to support tiling properly would have to be compiled to support the new tile-size APIs
* those APIs will only be available in the latest SDKs
* thus apps would have to be compiled against the latest version of Android
* and thus all of the older devices running older versions of Android are now incompatible.

Obviously there's a cleaner way to go about this and I'm interested in how Samsung have worked around this issue. But now that I think about the technical complications a bit more, it may not be as simple for developers as it originally seems.

(though I'm not trying to argue that this is a reason for such features not to be implemented!)

I'm saying their goal is right, and the implementation will improve. In pretty much every category Samsung starts with crappy products and works their way up to being among the best for the money.

I think that is more a matter of opinion. I don't think Samsung phones are the best for the money and while I'll agree that TouchWiz has slowly (and I mean at a snails pace) improved with time, I think it's still a massive devolution of the quality in vanilla Android.

That's just my opinion though ;)

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[12]: Comment by Laurence
by some1 on Thu 31st Jan 2013 22:24 in reply to "RE[11]: Comment by Laurence"
some1 Member since:
2010-10-05

I know I'm nitpicking here, but that might actually cause more work for developers as they'd have to rewrite any code that didn't expect app sizes to change mid-execution (ie at the moment you can expect screen size to be static. but now they'd have to write app so that it dynamically changes the layout while the app is running).

Very good point. Size can already change dynamically due to screen orientation change though, so may be it's possible to piggyback on that. But I'm sure there are many subtle issues the real implementation will have to deal with.

I don't think Samsung phones are the best for the money

Samsung makes a lot more than phones. And I've never said they are the best.

Reply Parent Score: 2