Apple Cans iOS Chief, Retail Chief

[bearxor]

So I've been reading a lot about skeumorphic design, because I wasn't very familiar with it. Honestly, I don't really mind it. I can understand some of the arguments like the elements don't make sense in today's world to the younger audience but I don't think that would be the reason for Forstall's departure. I think you can still make a modern looking UI and leaving elements of the physical objects its replacing. There was definitely a bigger issue here.

 

[akugami]

...I can definitely agree that there's a bit of an "art" to developing good but usable software. Not to toot my own horn, but I think I've been getting a bit better at it in regard to my own work, and it's definitely an odd experience. It really requires you to think about how anyone but you uses the software, which that sort of abstract, empathetic thinking isn't something that you attribute to engineers.

One thing that I've fought a lot with too is keeping to the scope of the application's intention. People wanting random features doesn't really work too well when they don't match up with the program's original intention. 😛

The software the company I work for produces is entirely database driven. We face the exact same problems with having to limit the scope of what we do as well as having to think abstractly about how the end users will use our software and what types of data we need to store. Interesting stuff having to think abstractly about the data we need to store and how it will be used and how we have to think outside the box and imagine possible future uses for the data. This is some of the exact same things we have to do.

The bad part is the client will cuss you out and say your software sucks...even if you hit every bullet point requirement they asked for unless you can think outside the box and anticipate "hidden" requirements and needs.

Kind of a cop out on your part. It seems as though people just keep repeating these talking points about Apple, Android, or really just about any tech company, but they can't offer anything beyond that.

Call it what you will. I'm not a professional UX designer. It is nowhere near as easy as you would think. That's why I say it's a loaded question. If I truly had something imaginative, I will repeat that I'd be selling my idea to Google, MS or Apple. And yes, I do work for a software company and I do have input on UX elements of the software we develop. This stuff is not easy to do.

It's easy for us "armchair developers" to say that Apple/Google/MS needs a UI change to freshen things up, it's extremely difficult to actually do something that freshens things up AND makes things easy to use AND has to complement every other element of the OS.

...My best guess is that we'll see the skuemorphic designs disappear and more of Ive's typical minimalist approach used going forward. Most people would probably agree that this is a good thing, but I suppose once we actually get there, there're going to be at least a few articles bemoaning the loss of the nice stitched-leather and card-table apps.

I'm in favor of a more minimalist approach. Sometimes a UI can be too "busy" because they're still catering to the existing users. It's why I was not opposed to the MS Office ribbon interface. Yes, I had difficulty finding some of the stuff I used to use but I've gotten used to it and for common tasks, most of the stuff is front and center or easy to find when you need it.

*EDIT* Corrected a bad tag which screwed up the formatting in the quote.

 

[grkM3]

They very well could have used the same FPU, decoder, etc. from the A15, but that still doesn't explain the huge difference in pipeline depth between the two designs. There's such a large difference there, that even if the other elements are similar, that they're obviously not the same.

Also, there's nothing special about having a wider decoder. They're obviously going to have similar ancestry, but Qualcomm may have modified the design of theirs to some degree and stuck with their own design. Also, since all of the Cortex-AX chips work on the same instruction set, there's going to be a lot of similarity in the decoder anyways. The same goes for the FPU. Just because they implement the same instruction set doesn't mean that they have the same design.

What you're suggesting is basically the same as claiming that when Intel started making their 64-bit chips, they just took AMD's design and used that. Simply implementing the same instruction set does not mean that the internal design is the same.

Given that Qualcomm has been making their own customized cores since the Cortex-A8 days, it would take more evidence for me to buy into your statement. I'm less sure about Apple's A6, as I have no idea how long that was in development or even all of the available information about the chip to determine how related it is to the reference Cortex-A15 design, but you'd probably have a better argument there.

Simply having a similar feature set isn't conclusive proof.

I dont know what more proof that you want without having the full blown technical designs of the snapdragon but from the hardware specs that we know it is basically an A15 core with less pipeline depth and even the official A15 specs have the pipelines going from 15-25 stages and that is all up to how much power you want your soc to consume.

I have shown you the major increases that both cores have over there older A9 versions and you still doubt its not based off on an A15.

you are also forgetting that a dual core snapdragon s4 is neck to neck and even beating the quad core A9s in most benches.

now how bout someone show me how the S4 is based off A9 other than the fact that they all run the same instruction set and this is nothing like comparing intel to amd,we are talking about the same arch and making it beefier to get more performance.

it got its performance by going to 3 decode and 128 bit just like the A15 did over the A9

 

[Mopetar]

I dont know what more proof that you want without having the full blown technical designs of the snapdragon but from the hardware specs that we know it is basically an A15 core with less pipeline depth and even the official A15 specs have the pipelines going from 15-25 stages and that is all up to how much power you want your soc to consume.

I don't have the most in-depth knowledge of CPU design, but you do realize that you can't just easily modify the pipeline depth without making a lot of other serious changes to the architecture, right? My best guess, is that they started with a Cortex-A8 design and went towards a deeper pipeline in order to go after faster CPU speeds. That explanation makes a lot more sense than taking an architecture with a longer pipeline, and shortening it.

I have shown you the major increases that both cores have over there older A9 versions and you still doubt its not based off on an A15.

For the most part those have merely been implementations of instruction sets. That has nothing to do with the design. It merely indicates that you have a part that can handle certain types of instructions. Look at the current processor designs from AMD and Intel. Radically different designs, but they implement the same instruction sets.

you are also forgetting that a dual core snapdragon s4 is neck to neck and even beating the quad core A9s in most benches.

Which proves what exactly? Are you even sure that you know what the benchmarks are actually measuring? Many of the most common ones don't control for differences in software, etc. that makes the results somewhat meaningless for what you're attempting to suggest.

now how bout someone show me how the S4 is based off A9 other than the fact that they all run the same instruction set and this is nothing like comparing intel to amd,we are talking about the same arch and making it beefier to get more performance.

That Qualcomm has been releasing Snapdragon parts since before the Cortex-A9 even existed would suggest that their custom designs probably predate even that processor for one. Beyond that, unless anyone has done an extensive analysis of the designs, it's almost impossible to determine how much Qualcomm's design has borrowed from the reference ARM design and how much of it is completely customized at any given point.

it got its performance by going to 3 decode and 128 bit just like the A15 did over the A9

Merely having a decoder of a certain width or a bus of a certain size, doesn't mean anything. The AMD Phenom CPUs had a 3-wide decoder. Are you going to suggest that the S4 is based on that architecture just because they have some features in common?

 

[iGas]

It could be a positive thing that Apple is doing a house cleaning and cut out the dissidents, but it go to show how poorly Apple have been running the company lately that lead to poor communications and created rivalries within. Ousting some of the dissidents to have more control may be a good thing in the short term, but in the long term it may comeback to haunt them, because Scott Forstall and John Browett may end up among the ranks of their competitors, such as Microsoft, Google, etc...

Perhaps this mark the beginning of the downfall of a giant.

 

[grkM3]

why are you bringing up AMD again?l A9 went from 2 wide to 3 wide going from A9 to A15,A9 went from 64bit to 128 going to A15 and so didnt the s4 and the stages alo increased over A9 and everything points out to it being based off of the A15 Arch

Do I really need to find a bunch of bench marks to show you how much stronger an S4 is over its older A9 based one?you dont double the performance(almost in most benchs)from using the same core arch and if they could the original A9 would of been twaeked that way from the get go by ARM.

Can you please show me support saying the s4 is a A9 core? I have gone over this like a broken record and you still dont seem to gasp on how similar the S4 is to the A15 ARC

yes they all are based off each other and share alot of things but to gain the performance boost the s4 got is not happening using 3 year old A9 arch

 

[Mopetar]

why are you bringing up AMD again?

To illustrate my point that simply having a 3-wide decoder is somewhat meaningless when attempting to determine whether or not the chip is based on the A15 or not.

l A9 went from 2 wide to 3 wide going from A9 to A15,A9 went from 64bit to 128 going to A15 and so didnt the s4 and the stages alo increased over A9 and everything points out to it being based off of the A15 Arch

And yet the pipeline length is sufficiently different that there are some radically different things going on with those chips. That seems to me to be a far better indication of the relationship of the two than the width of the decoder or what instruction sets they use.

Do I really need to find a bunch of bench marks to show you how much stronger an S4 is over its older A9 based one?you dont double the performance(almost in most benchs)from using the same core arch and if they could the original A9 would of been twaeked that way from the get go by ARM.

Go ahead and point them out. I have a feeling that on inspection there will be things that you haven't accounted for. Without knowing specifically to which benchmarks you refer, I really can't tell though, so please do post them.

Can you please show me support saying the s4 is a A9 core? I have gone over this like a broken record and you still dont seem to gasp on how similar the S4 is to the A15 ARC

yes they all are based off each other and share alot of things but to gain the performance boost the s4 got is not happening using 3 year old A9 arch

That's just it though, they're not that similar, especially in some key areas such as pipeline depth. Each stage in the pipeline performs different roles. In general having a longer pipeline means you can make each stage less complex and can bump up the clock speed as each stage can execute more quickly. The A15 has at least a 15-stage pipeline. Krait has 11, and Scorpion before it had 10. It's a lot more likely that the design evolved from their previous work rather than them tossing out everything and doing some heavy work to remove four pipeline stages.

As I've said, it's certainly possible (and probably likely in some cases) that parts of the S4 are almost identical to those found in the A15. Some of that work just wouldn't be worth duplicating, unless you had some really good reasons for it. However, there are a lot of other pieces of the SoC where it's more likely that it's entirely custom work done by Qualcomm and shares little relationship with the A15 other than common ancestry. Similarly, it's probably not even fair to say that the S4 is based on the Cortex-A9 any more than it is on the A15. Unless there's a really in-depth analysis of all the different chips available, it would be almost impossible to determine where Qualcomm has kept or tossed out parts of the SoC that originated in different times for every part of the chip.

 

[jpeyton]

Wall Street isn't too happy about Apple's performance/product releases over the last 5 weeks, and the latest firings are only adding to it. Apple stock has dropped $110/share from it's all-time high after the iPhone 5 unveiling.

 

[grkM3]

dosnt the A15 use a helper core to feed the pipeline?If the S4 has it then we can put this to rest

here is a few benches on comparing a true A9 quad xynos to a quad core S4pro,fast forward to 4:16 seconds to see how much stronger the mflops are over the older A9 arch,its litterally 3x faster and going back from memory ARM said its true A15 would hit 4x the cpu power over there older A9 and in that bench the s4pro is almost hitting those numbers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnhrwM7CQyE

 

[lothar]

It could be a positive thing that Apple is doing a house cleaning and cut out the dissidents, but it go to show how poorly Apple have been running the company lately that lead to poor communications and created rivalries within. Ousting some of the dissidents to have more control may be a good thing in the short term, but in the long term it may comeback to haunt them, because Scott Forstall and John Browett may end up among the ranks of their competitors, such as Microsoft, Google, etc...

Perhaps this mark the beginning of the downfall of a giant.

Screw that.
We don't want Scott Forstall or John Browett at Google.

They can go to RIMM or Microsoft.

 

[golem]

Wall Street isn't too happy about Apple's performance/product releases over the last 5 weeks, and the latest firings are only adding to it. Apple stock has dropped $110/share from it's all-time high after the iPhone 5 unveiling.

Please take a look at the current prices for Apple, Microsoft, and google.

Then compare to the 52 week highs and lows for each company.

Apple is down 15.6% from it's 52 week high
Google is down 12.1% from it's 52 week high
Microsoft is down 12.38% from it's 52 week high

Apple is down the most from it's 52 week high but they are all comparable.

Something else to look at tho.

Microsoft is up 17.45% from it's 52 week low
Google is up 18.19% from it's 52 week low.
Apple is up 63.86% from it's 52 week low.

 

[gorcorps]

I'm in favor of a more minimalist approach. Sometimes a UI can be too "busy" because they're still catering to the existing users. It's why I was not opposed to the MS Office ribbon interface. Yes, I had difficulty finding some of the stuff I used to use but I've gotten used to it and for common tasks, most of the stuff is front and center or easy to find when you need it.

Agreed

At a certain point these companies seem to be against any big changes to the UI because their userbase will be up in arms over all the changes. HOWEVER, just like with Office 07 and beyond it's mostly a matter of getting used to it. Now I love the new office products and most of what I do is so much easier to get at, but at first I was furious with how many things were changed.

Apple could use somebody who isn't afraid to make an arguably radical change, because all of their innovations of the last few versions involve just plastering more stuff on the same type of interface. With a new interface, or a little bit more allowed customization, I might find myself going back to an iphone.

IMO they should release a dev kit specifically for theming and changing the UI. Allow the devs to make fairly radical changes to the homescreen and such, and make those themes part of the App Store. Apple users will finally be able to get something other than icons on a grid, Apple will be able to get more money if the themes are sold for a buck or two like current apps, they'll still have quality control over the themes like they do with their app store, and finally they leave the creative part to the developer base. Plus that means existing users who don't want to change don't have to. It sounds like a win-win-win situation for Apple, the devs, and the users.

 

[bearxor]

The thought that two iPhones could have radically different homescreen or menu layouts is disconcerting. No sir, I don't like it.

If you want to add widgets or something, that's fine, but there needs to be a consistent, uniform way to the placement, location and function of menu items and such. I'm not sure if you consider that part of your "apple review guidelines", but if Apple just reviews themes and makes sure that things are placed on each theme in a standard setting, then I don't see the point of theming. All you'd basically be doing is changing the wallpaper, maybe some colors, and adding a few widgets to the home screen, because the placement of everything else, like an app drawer, would still be mandated by Apple. Is that worth creating a whole subsection of apps and approval policies?

All I know is that I don't want to have a user call up and then have to try and guess where thier settings app is at because they've completed changed everything through a theme and I can't tell them where to tap.

 

[grkM3]

The thought that two iPhones could have radically different homescreen or menu layouts is disconcerting. No sir, I don't like it.

If you want to add widgets or something, that's fine, but there needs to be a consistent, uniform way to the placement, location and function of menu items and such. I'm not sure if you consider that part of your "apple review guidelines", but if Apple just reviews themes and makes sure that things are placed on each theme in a standard setting, then I don't see the point of theming. All you'd basically be doing is changing the wallpaper, maybe some colors, and adding a few widgets to the home screen, because the placement of everything else, like an app drawer, would still be mandated by Apple. Is that worth creating a whole subsection of apps and approval policies?

All I know is that I don't want to have a user call up and then have to try and guess where thier settings app is at because they've completed changed everything through a theme and I can't tell them where to tap.

Apple is lacking more and more with every new update android is doing,jelly bean just got a refresh and is now 4.2 and they also added miracast that is an OPEN standard to streaming video to supporting devices,using open standard is what is pushing android ahead of apple.

next year every new tv,home audio reciever and basically any media device will support this,just like most tv and audio gear support dlna now but now we have google putting an official branding on miracast and will push that to the limit and people will jump on board.

its not just themes that is holding apple back,its the locked eco system it uses.

apple will copy this but make people need to buy special expensive hardware and it will only work on there brand produtcs and TVs,you will need to buy an adapter for your home audio and an adapter for your tv(if they even deside to let you use one)they will probably make there users buy a whole apple eco system to do the same things,like apple tv,apple home audio etc and not just let the people use what they want.

its sad that my 4 year old onkyo reciever has dlna and my gs3 conects to it with ease over dlna and I can stream anything from my phone to my nice audio system.

why cant apple use dlna? and please no BS like dlna never works right and apples way is better becuase it just works and thats why they dont use it.

apple is falling behind not just with how the OS looks but how it can connect with other devices aswell

 

[golem]

apple will copy this but make people need to buy special expensive hardware and it will only work on there brand produtcs and TVs,you will need to buy an adapter for your home audio and an adapter for your tv(if they even deside to let you use one)they will probably make there users buy a whole apple eco system to do the same things,like apple tv,apple home audio etc and not just let the people use what they want.

Apple already has this. It's called Airplay.

 

[grkM3]

Apple already has this. It's called Airplay.

yes I know,they should call it airplayforapplerpoductsonly

also does airplay stream HD video wirelessly?

 

[gorcorps]

The thought that two iPhones could have radically different homescreen or menu layouts is disconcerting. No sir, I don't like it.

If you want to add widgets or something, that's fine, but there needs to be a consistent, uniform way to the placement, location and function of menu items and such. I'm not sure if you consider that part of your "apple review guidelines", but if Apple just reviews themes and makes sure that things are placed on each theme in a standard setting, then I don't see the point of theming. All you'd basically be doing is changing the wallpaper, maybe some colors, and adding a few widgets to the home screen, because the placement of everything else, like an app drawer, would still be mandated by Apple. Is that worth creating a whole subsection of apps and approval policies?

All I know is that I don't want to have a user call up and then have to try and guess where thier settings app is at because they've completed changed everything through a theme and I can't tell them where to tap.

I was thinking just the homescreen would be changed, not the underlying menus. And like I said... it wouldn't be forced it's an option for people who want something different. How can you be against people having choice while affecting none of the other users?

 

[Mopetar]

dosnt the A15 use a helper core to feed the pipeline?If the S4 has it then we can put this to rest.

Could be a good way of looking at it. Not necessarily conclusive though, as it's possible that such a helper core could be tacked on to another design. It definitely would show that the S4 borrows heavily from the improvements.

here is a few benches on comparing a true A9 quad xynos to a quad core S4pro,fast forward to 4:16 seconds to see how much stronger the mflops are over the older A9 arch,its litterally 3x faster and going back from memory ARM said its true A15 would hit 4x the cpu power over there older A9 and in that bench the s4pro is almost hitting those numbers

If it's faster at a memory test, it just means it has a better memory controller. Maybe they did use the one from A15, or once again maybe it's something they designed themselves. Also, a lot of the benchmarks don't show anywhere near such a high level of performance increase. So in some ways it performs more like an A15, and in some ways it performs a lot closer to the A9.

Think of it this way though, if Qualcomm had access to the A15 design, and could base their SoC around it, why would they produce a design that ends up having worse performance. That would mean that they intentionally gimped the design. Why wouldn't they work on tweaking performance to get an extra 5-10%? The only possible remaining explanation is that the Cortex-A15 is not as efficient as they would like so they made some trade-offs there.

Otherwise it makes no sense at all for Qualcomm to be able to make a custom design based on the A15, but to turn out something that doesn't even perform as well. Why even have a team building a custom design at that point?

 

[grkM3]

Could be a good way of looking at it. Not necessarily conclusive though, as it's possible that such a helper core could be tacked on to another design. It definitely would show that the S4 borrows heavily from the improvements.



If it's faster at a memory test, it just means it has a better memory controller. Maybe they did use the one from A15, or once again maybe it's something they designed themselves. Also, a lot of the benchmarks don't show anywhere near such a high level of performance increase. So in some ways it performs more like an A15, and in some ways it performs a lot closer to the A9.

Think of it this way though, if Qualcomm had access to the A15 design, and could base their SoC around it, why would they produce a design that ends up having worse performance. That would mean that they intentionally gimped the design. Why wouldn't they work on tweaking performance to get an extra 5-10%? The only possible remaining explanation is that the Cortex-A15 is not as efficient as they would like so they made some trade-offs there.

Otherwise it makes no sense at all for Qualcomm to be able to make a custom design based on the A15, but to turn out something that doesn't even perform as well. Why even have a team building a custom design at that point?

A15 is a monster in power consumtion from whats out there and the only reason samsung is getting away with it is from there new fab that is said to reduce power by 40% using there process.So the S4 was prolly built to what there power envelop was set at.

They made trade offs to reduce heat and power consumtion for sure

 

[bearxor]

I was thinking just the homescreen would be changed, not the underlying menus. And like I said... it wouldn't be forced it's an option for people who want something different. How can you be against people having choice while affecting none of the other users?

I think I addressed that somewhere.

Lets just say, fantasy world, Apple decides to reorganize the phone so that apps Are now no longer stored on the home screens and are in an app drawer. That app drawer has to be accessible somehow. Lets just say its accessible by a button on the dock and Apple decides to do a 5 icon dock and the new button is for 'all apps'. So basically, Android.

Now, with your "theming center" idea, how much change are you talking about? Because in order for things to still be in a uniform spot, you're only talking about wallpaper and widgets at this point. I don't consider that to be "fairly radical changes", so what would be the point of doing a seperate theming section and approval process.

As for not liking it, I'm thinking from a support angle. I don't want to have to deal with 300 iPhone users, some who have made "radical chnges" to their layouts and some that use stock iOS. End users are dumb. They'll install anything and then not have a clue how to use it. Already have an issue when someone installs replacement launchers and then call in and I try to walk them through steps and they're like "I don't see that!"

 

[Mopetar]

A15 is a monster in power consumtion from whats out there and the only reason samsung is getting away with it is from there new fab that is said to reduce power by 40% using there process. So the S4 was prolly built to what there power envelop was set at.

Qualcomm is using TSMC's 28nm process, which generally would result in lower power consumption than a 32nm process unless Samsung is really using some special sauce with theirs.

We've probably drug this thread off-topic enough for now. We'll be able to have a better discussion once we get some actual benchmarks. The Nexus 10 reviews shouldn't be too far off so we'll know for sure then. Otherwise it's mostly just back and forth speculation without much actual evidence.

 

[grkM3]

Yeah we have gone to far but yes Samsung said they spent almost 4billion on some special metal gate process to drop power by 40%

 

[Mopetar]

Yeah we have gone to far but yes Samsung said they spent almost 4billion on some special metal gate process to drop power by 40%

High-k metal gate?

I think TSMC is also using it.

 

[Mopetar]

Apparently, Mansfield's return to Apple did have something to do with Forstall being fired: http://allthingsd.com/20121101/behind-silicon-valleys-un-retirement-why-bob-mansfield-is-back-at-apple/

Relevant bit:

As one source close to the company told AllThingsD, “The timing of Bob’s return is not coincidental.”

To begin with, Mansfield was not a fan of Forstall’s confrontational management style, and sources said he generally tried to avoid the iOS exec. Indeed, Bloomberg reported last year that Mansfield would meet with Forstall only if Cook were present to mediate. I’ve heard many similar stories.

“It wasn’t a him-or-me situation,” one source said of Mansfield’s return and Forstall’s departure. “But, put it this way, I think Bob was much more willing to commit to two more years once he knew Scott was on his way out.”

 

[golem]

yes I know,they should call it airplayforapplerpoductsonly

also does airplay stream HD video wirelessly?

I think so, not sure if it's 720 or 1080 though.