10 Things that "Absolutely suck" about the iPhone. (Yes I have one)

[surur]

With streaming of course I am talking about large sequential media files, like video. It is interesting that you can load 300 MB pdf's (how did you do this?) but perhaps this was also decoded on a page by page basis. I was wondering to what depth you could zoom those pdf's? Are they also just x2, or can you zoom a very large picture (like a pdf of the london underground) to pixel level?

I would personally be surprised if the NAND built into the iPhone was faster than most or close to equivalent speed to an average HDD. Very soon the first benchmarks of the device will be available, due to the pervasive hacking taking place.

Re the voodoo stuff, I think people are mis-attributing their problems to the only factor they actually have any control over, being the amount of content on the device. Managing the space is their only hammer, and this makes all their stability problems nails.

Surur

 

[oalvarez]

The iPhone has 128 MB memory. Many people are experiencing problems related to opening large web pages, glitches building up when the device is not rebooted after a few days, and inability to reliably use Ipod and Safari at the same time. These all strongly suggest memory management problems.

Do you still have your Mongul then? I thought you returned it 2 days ago now.

Surur

i do have the Mogul, it is in its box, as i did/do plan on returning it. i asked my IT department to check into "blackberry connect" given that the Mogul could definitely not handle running Goodlink (client app) given it's inability to function very well when the memory gets low. i personally don't care for a business device that i have to continuously shut apps down to be able to run some other (or not even be able to open them up!).

you count the days from which i said something? surprised you pay that much attention to my posts

 

[cmaier]

With streaming of course I am talking about large sequential media files, like video. It is interesting that you can load 300 MB pdf's (how did you do this?) but perhaps this was also decoded on a page by page basis. I was wondering to what depth you could zoom those pdf's? Are they also just x2, or can you zoom a very large picture (like a pdf of the london underground) to pixel level?

I would personally be surprised if the NAND built into the iPhone was faster than most or close to equivalent speed to an average HDD. Very soon the first benchmarks of the device will be available, due to the pervasive hacking taking place.

Re the voodoo stuff, I think people are mis-attributing their problems to the only factor they actually have any control over, being the amount of content on the device. Managing the space is their only hammer, and this makes all their stability problems nails.

Surur

So are you suggesting the iPhone NAND is slower than the wikipedia numbers, because I doubt that.
And I'm happy to point you at year old hdd specs.

EDIT: and all that's sort of moot. The point is that the bandwidth ballpark is at least the same (the peak burst speed of SATA-150 would be 3x the peak of NAND if you believe the wiki, and HDD's don't reach the interface burst rate, which is one of the reasons why PATA/133 is about the same "speed" as SATA-150), and, in fact, latency is much smaller in NAND - whether latency or bandwidth is more important is a function of page size and hit rate). Furthermore, a slower-clocked processor can achieve the same benefit with slower virtual memory (think of it this way - no point in rushing to get things to the CPU if the CPU is too busy to do anything with it). All of which tells me only that iphone would benefit from using virtual memory in NAND, not that it actually does so. What makes me think it actually does so is programmer laziness - it would be more work for everyone involved if it did not do so.

pdfs: I can zoom far more than x2 - looks like x10ish (i can see zoom to where i can see about 6 or 7 vertical lines of text). Fwiw acrobat is using 1.2 gb loading the same pages

As for how, I simply access my doc mgmt system at work.

 

[surur]

So are you suggesting the iPhone NAND is slower than the wikipedia numbers, because I doubt that.
And I'm happy to point you at year old hdd specs.

EDIT: and all that's sort of moot. The point is that the bandwidth ballpark is at least the same (the peak burst speed of SATA-150 would be 3x the peak of NAND if you believe the wiki, and HDD's don't reach the interface burst rate, which is one of the reasons why PATA/133 is about the same "speed" as SATA-150), and, in fact, latency is much smaller in NAND - whether latency or bandwidth is more important is a function of page size and hit rate). Furthermore, a slower-clocked processor can achieve the same benefit with slower virtual memory (think of it this way - no point in rushing to get things to the CPU if the CPU is too busy to do anything with it). All of which tells me only that iphone would benefit from using virtual memory in NAND, not that it actually does so. What makes me think it actually does so is programmer laziness - it would be more work for everyone involved if it did not do so.

The reason why I doubt the iPhone uses virtual memory is that embedded devices very rarely do. As you pointed out, at best its as fast as a HDD, and at worse much slower. Even with a fast HDD paging is a pain (which is why I turned it of on my XP box). For embedded devices where instant response is expected loading memory pages from VM is usually not tolerable.

BTW, the iPhone does not use some super-optimized NAND chip, its the same one as the 8 GB Ipod Nano.

pdfs: I can zoom far more than x2 - looks like x10ish (i can see zoom to where i can see about 6 or 7 vertical lines of text). Fwiw acrobat is using 1.2 gb loading the same pages

As for how, I simply access my doc mgmt system at work.

Presumable you did not wait 5 minutes for the PDF to download to safari before it showed up, again implying the PDF was being loaded page by page from the web.

Surur

 

[cmaier]

The reason why I doubt the iPhone uses virtual memory is that embedded devices very rarely do. As you pointed out, at best its as fast as a HDD, and at worse much slower. Even with a fast HDD paging is a pain (which is why I turned it of on my XP box). For embedded devices where instant response is expected loading memory pages from VM is usually not tolerable.

BTW, the iPhone does not use some super-optimized NAND chip, its the same one as the 8 GB Ipod Nano.



Presumable you did not wait 5 minutes for the PDF to download to safari before it showed up, again implying the PDF was being loaded page by page from the web.

Surur

Actually, i did wait quite awhile for the documents to fully load (an annoyingly long time, but I didn't stopwatch it). It's loaded as a pdf, not an image, and the website has no facility for providing one page at a time (it simply supplies the entire pdf file), so not sure what you are suggesting.

I am not suggesting a super-optimized NAND chip. Any NAND chip will have a far smaller (factor of 10'ish) latency than any hard disk drive. Hard disks will always be at a disadvantage since they require a disk to mechanically rotate. As for bandwidth, again, I have no idea what the bandwidth is on the ipod or iphone flash, so I am just relying on the wikipedia "50" number (confirmed by random clicks on a google search, one such example i already provided), which, again, is only a few times slower than perpendicular hdd's (which only became widely available in the last year or so).

As for disabling virtual memory speeding up your computer, it depends. If properly implemented (for example, on Solaris or usually on linux) this shouldn't happen, because nothing ever gets paged to disk unless RAM is "full." So you shouldn't start hitting virtual memory until you exceed the capacity of physical memory.

Windows (at least as late as XP) seems to "mirror" the physical memory space into the virtual memory file, which would be much slower, as you are accessing disk even when you aren't exceeding the capacity of physical memory. They may have changed this recently - the last time I studied windows' memory architecture was with windows NT.

As a result, properly implemented virtual memory has no down side - you only pay a speed penalty when you would have otherwise run out of memory anyway. The only reason I can think of not to have implemented it is if they are worried about the number of write-cycles-before-failure on the NAND.

And "embedded devices rarely do" doesn't convince me one way or the other. Some embedded devices certainly do. Apple TV definitely does (another "strip stuff out of the OS" science project.) It's definitely supported by the processor and memory controller, the operating system it is based on (OSX) definitely supports it (and it really is a subset of real OSX based on directory listings and already-discovered API interfaces), and it would require more work to disable it than to leave it in there.

Embedded devices rarely have capacitive multitouch screens, either, but this one certainly does.

Anyway, it very well might not have virtual memory enabled, but I just don't see any real technical reason that it couldn't.

 

[Mike Overbo]

My guess is that the system pages apps in and out of memory as needed. If it didn't page, why wouldn't it be able to handle scrolling large sites in memory while in iSafari without resorting to the checkerboard screen when scrolling fast?

 

[cmaier]

http://download.micron.com/pdf/technotes/nand/tn2904.pdf

This is a micron technical spec for 2GB nand flash that it claims is comparable to samsung's parts. I believe these specs are representative of what is used in the ipod/iphone.

They cite a 30ns read cycle time, and they have either an 8- or 16-bit bus. Assuming 16bits, that's 2B/30ns = 6.66e8B/s = 63 MB/s (depending on how you define a megabyte). Definitely in the ballpark of the 50MB/s claimed in the wikipedia page.

So no "magic superduper nand" is required to get pretty decent read performance. Write may be another matter entirely.

 

[bruckwine]

sort of felt like "beating up" from where i'm sitting, but whatever. this feature is of no use to me (though i tried browsing their test gallery and it really is very nicely done), but it's still a "feature."

What's also interesting is, apparently, it was already on the phone - no new firmware was needed. It looks like it was on a timer or something.

I've said all along I expect a lot of new stuff to come out when leopard comes out, since they share a lot of code; this is just another case of iphone stuff being "released" when the desktop part was ready as well.

That may be due to the general mood of the last few pages..but all i said was "do you really consider those "features" and then explained that I was aiming at the companies who pull that kinda stunt. I apologize if you took that for a personal attack!

And back to the point - I am not surprised it was already on the phone - it's basically syncing with the internet(.Mac) which it's supposed to do with the hardware there already..it's mre like they turned on a feature at .mac rather than the iPhone, as the iPhone could already use the internet no?

 

[cmaier]

That may be due to the general mood of the last few pages..but all i said was "do you really consider those "features" and then explained that I was aiming at the companies who pull that kinda stunt. I apologize if you took that for a personal attack!

And back to the point - I am not surprised it was already on the phone - it's basically syncing with the internet(.Mac) which it's supposed to do with the hardware there already..it's mre like they turned on a feature at .mac rather than the iPhone, as the iPhone could already use the internet no?

Something had to turn on at the iphone side as a new option appeared when you click the "send" button on a photo (on the iphone).

 

[bruckwine]

Something had to turn on at the iphone side as a new option appeared when you click the "send" button on a photo (on the iphone).

Most def...but when OS X or XP/Vista adds more OS options e.g. iphone sync, MSN live etc I never consider those as features per se.

 

[cmaier]

Why not? Allowing you to do something you couldn't do before is a feature. It may not be a very valuable feature, or it may be a feature you don't care about, or it may be a feature you think should have been there in the first place, but it's still a feature.

 

[bruckwine]

Why not? Allowing you to do something you couldn't do before is a feature. It may not be a very valuable feature, or it may be a feature you don't care about, or it may be a feature you think should have been there in the first place, but it's still a feature.

But is it a new feature (its improtance varies according to user of course)? As you say it might have always been there and only required them saying "iMac=true) - is it a new protocol or is it simply providing a client to do what safari and the mail can't due to handicapping? By that definition of feature every hack is a new feature and any prog they may allow in future is a new feature...on that basis OS like XP and Windows have new features all the time. If so then fair play - but not much to write home about.

 

[cmaier]

huh? It's a "new" feature in that a few minutes earlier there was no such button to press when you clicked "send" on a photo. Whether they coded it from scratch or did "imac=true," what's the difference?

Yes, OS like XP and Windows have new features all the time - whenever they release new versions that contain things other than bug fixes.

I'm just not getting what you are saying, I suppose.

 

[oalvarez]

in all fairness i'm not understanding much of it either, but i'm trying.

it's something "new" to the device, its function brings upon a new outcome.

it's "new" whether it should have been there from the get-go or not.

right? wrong?

 

[surur]

http://download.micron.com/pdf/technotes/nand/tn2904.pdf

This is a micron technical spec for 2GB nand flash that it claims is comparable to samsung's parts. I believe these specs are representative of what is used in the ipod/iphone.

They cite a 30ns read cycle time, and they have either an 8- or 16-bit bus. Assuming 16bits, that's 2B/30ns = 6.66e8B/s = 63 MB/s (depending on how you define a megabyte). Definitely in the ballpark of the 50MB/s claimed in the wikipedia page.

So no "magic superduper nand" is required to get pretty decent read performance. Write may be another matter entirely.

If you go directly to the Samsung website and use the part number, it appears the device has a 50ns read time.

K9MCG08U5M

Anyway, I see no point really in further going back and forth about this. I am sure some-one, in the next few weeks, will be able to clarify this definitively.

Surur

 

[surur]

I thought the iPhone was supposed to be invincible? I guess not...

- - Dropped iPhone on Carpet. Broken.

kgarchar 08-08-2007 11:41 PM

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Dropped iPhone on Carpet. Broken.

Yep. I'm an idiot who wasn't watching his pocket when he jumps off the counter. iPhone hits the ground on the carpet kinda hard. Doesn't work much after.




I'm taking it into apple tomorrow. I am a bit let down with the durability of my phone, and I'll be seriously let down if they say they're not going to replace it. Granted it's my fault...it's freaking carpet

I guess i'll go into detail. The bottom home button is unresponsive, the mic BARELY works. The dock connector port doesn't work(but did for an hour?) and the speaker sounds like poo.

megfilmworks 08-08-2007 11:48 PM

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Wow, bad luck. I've dropped mine a few times, even on tile and not a scratch.
Good luck at the store. If it fell on carpet then it shouldn't have any external damage

CANEHDN 08-08-2007 11:49 PM

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That sucks. I've read of people testing the scratch resistance on the iPhones by dropping them on concrete and stuff. I haven't heard of them breaking. Must have hit just right. Hopefully they will replace it. Just don't mention anything about dropping it. Just say it stopped working. Let us know what happens.

Stadsport 08-08-2007 11:51 PM

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I'm just curious, but what exactly happened to it? What isn't working anymore?

I mean it has no moving parts so other than the screen cracking, I can't see what would (easily) break.

kgarchar 08-08-2007 11:53 PM

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by kgarchar (Post 4023579)
I guess i'll go into detail. The bottom home button is unresponsive, the mic BARELY works. The dock connector port doesn't work(but did for an hour?) and the speaker sounds like poo.
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there's the detail

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=339401

Surur

 

[Pearl_Diva]

It may be inconsistent build quality. You get a good one, an acceptable one, or a bad one. I had that problem with Nanos, which is why I gave up on that line. I haven't really seen this problem on the hard drive iPod although other people report it.

For the iPhone, they should have fixed that problem better. But Treos also have inconsistent build quality judging by posts on the entire forum, to be fair.

 

[bruckwine]

huh? It's a "new" feature in that a few minutes earlier there was no such button to press when you clicked "send" on a photo. Whether they coded it from scratch or did "imac=true," what's the difference?

Yes, OS like XP and Windows have new features all the time - whenever they release new versions that contain things other than bug fixes.

I'm just not getting what you are saying, I suppose.

in all fairness i'm not understanding much of it either, but i'm trying.

it's something "new" to the device, its function brings upon a new outcome.

it's "new" whether it should have been there from the get-go or not.

right? wrong?

From answers.com

fea?ture (fē'chər) pronunciation
n.

1.
1. Any of the distinct parts of the face, as the eyes, nose, or mouth.
2. The overall appearance of the face or its parts. Often used in the plural.
2. A prominent or distinctive aspect, quality, or characteristic: a feature of one's personality; a feature of the landscape.
3. Linguistics.
1. A property of linguistic units or forms: Nasality is a phonological feature.
2. In generative linguistics, any of various abstract entities that combine to specify underlying phonological, morphological, semantic, and syntactic properties of linguistic forms and that act as the targets of linguistic rules and operations.
4.
1. The main film presentation at a theater.
2. A full-length film.
5. A special attraction at an entertainment.
6. A prominent or special article, story, or department in a newspaper or periodical. - features are usually unique or very distinct e.g. screen size, iPod, etc
7. An item advertised or offered as particularly attractive or as an inducement: a washing machine with many features.
8. Archaic.
1. Outward appearance; form or shape.
2. Physical beauty.

tr.v., -tured, -tur?ing, -tures.

1. To give special attention to; display, publicize, or make prominent.
2. To have or include as a prominent part or characteristic: The play featured two well-known actors. - features usually describe distinct or particular characteristics of things e.g. multitouch screen
3. To depict or outline the features of.
4. Informal. To picture mentally; imagine: Can you feature her in that hat?

[Middle English feture, from Old French faiture, from Latin factūra, a working or making, from factus, past participle of facere, to make, do.]

I guess imo (which is what I've been saying all along) it's not prominent enough, and the new button you press is simply software implementation - the same as every hack and web app out there, just that it's officially from Apple. In my opinion it might be a feature but not a prominent one, more like a new function

func?tion (fŭngk'shən) pronunciation
n.

1. The action for which a person or thing is particularly fitted or employed.
2.
1. Assigned duty or activity.
2. A specific occupation or role: in my function as chief editor.
3. An official ceremony or a formal social occasion.
4. Something closely related to another thing and dependent on it for its existence, value, or significance: Growth is a function of nutrition. - the send photo to iMac feature is a function that needs the camera and internet or it doesn't exist - it is not a standalone phone feature you cna use outside of having a .mac account and is more an enhancement of other features imo
5. (Abbr. f) Mathematics.
1. A variable so related to another that for each value assumed by one there is a value determined for the other.
2. A rule of correspondence between two sets such that there is a unique element in the second set assigned to each element in the first set.
6. Biology. The physiological activity of an organ or body part.
7. Chemistry. The characteristic behavior of a chemical compound, resulting from the presence of a specific functional group.
8. Computer Science. A procedure within an application. - can also be considered this, it's a procedure within the photo gallery(?) feature, an extension whether it has its own button or not

intr.v., -tioned, -tion?ing, -tions.

To have or perform a function; serve: functioned as ambassador.

[Latin fūnctiō, fūnctiōn-, performance, execution, from fūnctus, past participle of fungī, to perform, execute.]
functionless func'tion?less adj.

SYNONYMS function, duty, office, role. These nouns denote the actions and activities assigned to, required of, or expected of a person: the function of a teacher; a bank clerk's duty; assumed the office of financial adviser; the role of a parent.

If you consider that a new feature then OS have new features all the time w/o changing versions, to me its an enhancement of a feature there already and a limited one at that as you need something else for to to work...plenty updates have more than bug fixes for OS X etc but ppl don't term them as new features. Might just be how we use the language everyday but I never hear ppl say things like "OS X Jaguar has a new feature" after loading an update unless it's something distinct like iTunes can now play movies rather than just music.

 

[surur]

This is hilarious and sad at the same time. Only iFans would make a video about copy and paste, and only Apple would be brazen enough to sell a device "5 years ahead of everyone else" without it.

https://forums.imore.com/e?link=htt...ttp%3A%2F%2Fvimeo.com%2F266383&token=tGumQiW1

This comment really brings it home though.

ZuD funck
I am so Bummed! I thought this actually Worked!
Jokes on me. Bought an iPhone for Blogging! This feature would make it so...

Yes, the iPhone is great for laughs after all.

Surur

 

[surur]

More on copying and pasting on the iphone.

- - Copy and Paste demo (sweet video inside)

DiscoJoey 08-09-2007 05:46 AM

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Copy and Paste demo (sweet video inside)

ok i lied the video isn't in the thread, but it is in the link below

http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/0...emo-loves-you/



Ok, we can officially and finally put this debate to rest: yes, Apple really could use its multi-touch input system to enable users to friggin' copy / paste text in the iPhone. And to prove it, the usual random internet dude (lonelysandwich) has put his skills to the test and developed a demo proof of concept video that Conan O'Brien will probably sue over. Hit it up after the break!

Mark Booth 08-09-2007 05:50 AM

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Gotta admit, there's been more than a couple of times that I'd have liked to have copy & paste capability! But I also frequently need highlight/delete. So, that little pop up should have at least three buttons... Copy, Paste and Delete.

Mark

tamakin 08-09-2007 06:23 AM

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that was a hilarious video.. he said I love you at the end.. hahahah

iLLGT2 08-09-2007 06:59 AM

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Cant wait for this damn feature!

Matt 08-09-2007 07:19 AM

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hahaha that was great! :laugh2:

Silverado 08-09-2007 07:24 AM

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Truely amazing that you can sell such a device in 2007 without it.

I think that Apple simply either hasn't perfected it yet or they were worried it would complicate the interface and interfere with its adoption. But to have the gall to think you can pull off introducing the device without it says a lot about Apple and about us.

Tinman 08-09-2007 07:34 AM

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The title of this thread should be "Fake Copy and Paste demo!" Grrrr, got my hopes up for nothing.

Video was funny though. God it reminded me of how annoying the guy that does the iPhone's videos is. :tounge:


--
Mike

RomeoSto 08-09-2007 08:00 AM

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Lol, did you see his throat after each time he spoke?

Silverado 08-09-2007 08:54 AM

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Funny video. I hope this is NOT how Apple implements it though, if they ever decide to do it.

gcvt 08-09-2007 09:16 AM

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That's some funny stuff :laugh2:

http://www.everythingiphone.com/forum/iphone/copy-and-paste-demo-sweet-video-inside-8347.html

Surur