Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ruslan 6143 days ago
I guess the only reason why ppl think "iPhone is cool" is just because of slick multi-touch GUI, there's nothing else superior in iPhone per se. I have been programming for both platforms for quite a while and, you know, I find Android's Java less evil than all that iPhone's Obj-C stuff randomly mixed with tons of C wrappers (CoreFoundation) for regular POSIX. I find Android SDK more advanced because, 1) less code does more, 2) it's pretty standard Java whereas iPhone/MacOS is a mind explosive mix of C, C++ and bogus ObjC, c) testing/debugging cycle for Android is significantly shorter and d) Android app deployment is almost instant.

Is there any reason why some vendor cannot implement same multi-touch input on their hardware ? Is it strictly patented ?
3 comments
unalone 6143 days ago
I guess the only reason why ppl think "iPhone is cool" is just because of slick multi-touch GUI, there's nothing else superior in iPhone per se.

Slick is superior. Having a phone that looks snappy and feels responsive is superior. It's not superior in a benchmark sense, perhaps, but nobody gives a fuck about benchmarks.

link
cpr 6143 days ago
Why do you say "mind explosive mix"--it's just Objective-C++ (yes, which includes C and C++ by definition--not a mix), which I find mind-explodingly good for what it is. (Being a grizzled old hacker with Smalltalk & Lisp roots way back.)

The Cocoa Touch libraries are excellent, as far as they go, drawing on a couple of decades of experience with Smalltalk-style UI code (NeXT and Cocoa); and, you're free to innovate on your own UI as far as you want to take it. Nothing in the way.

The OpenGL implementation (hardware itself & the software interface) is excellent, and just got much better with the 3GS.

Seems like they're moving from strength to strength, and I'm pretty cynical about these things.

link
dkokelley 6143 days ago
The G1's hardware does support multi-touch, but Apple requested that it be disabled. http://digital.venturebeat.com/2009/02/09/apple-asked-google...

The Palm Pre supports and uses multi-touch in the same manner as the iPhone.

It would seem that multi-touch isn't Apple's sole intellectual property, though they have IMO implemented it the best.

link
ruslan 6143 days ago
It's so frustrating when progress gets stuck against someone's greed. I think Google should make Android open source so everyone could commit their code to support features despite the will of Apple or mobile carriers. And this will also invite smaller vendors to use and populate Android.
link
dkokelley 6143 days ago
Android is open source (http://source.android.com/). The hardware is proprietary (AFAIK). People have run MT demo applications.

It's so frustrating when progress gets stuck against someone's greed.

I would actually argue that greed has driven the majority of progress over the last century.

link
inklesspen 6143 days ago
I've heard that Pre's implementation of multi-touch is the source of one of the legal battles between Apple and Palm.
link