Why This Is What Samsung Is Calling Ice Cream Sandwich

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/03/18/raphael

by shawndumas • 14 years ago

95 58 14 years ago

daringfireball.net

tbatterii3• 14 years ago

is it a rule that every time there's something new on daringfireball, it makes it to hackernews?

tvon• 14 years ago

Most DF posts don't make HN.

edit: and regardless he makes a good point here.

unalone• 14 years ago

John Gruber is a well-read author. Many of his readers frequent Hacker News.

There's a reason he's so well-read, too. His comments are frequently insightful and quickly make sense out of complicated issues. He's been my favorite online writer for years; sometimes he gets petty or partisan, but usually his writing is damned good.

dkarl• 14 years ago

Yes, and I think he hit the nail on the head in this case. HNers can be forgiven for having a bad opinion of Mr. Gruber, though, because his partisan Apple apologetics are usually what show up here. As a long-time HN reader I thought he was just a... well, to put it politely, an unpaid and especially passionate Apple PR flack, until I got more into the Apple world and ended up reading his better stuff.

tbatterii3• 14 years ago

I am familiar with his work. I just thought this particular one didn't have much substance.

ryanbraganza• 14 years ago

Nope: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

parfe• 14 years ago

The entire content of the submitted article is: "[T]he vast majority of Galaxy S II users are not technically savvy, have no idea what “Ice Cream Sandwich” is, and, most importantly, would totally freak out if they OK’d an over-the-air software update that completely changed the entire UI of their phone."

That's 254 characters. Two Tweets. It's obvious Gruber enjoys special attention and the HN community does not judge submissions on individual merit.

tbatterii3• 14 years ago

you put it better than I did. :)

ot86• 14 years ago

According to a new rumour, the upcoming Galaxy S3 will feature two launchers: Touchwiz and stock ICS. http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/r1m7a/my_friend_wor...

p1itopre• 14 years ago

From the source:

"To be clear, I'm talking specifically about the user interface -- the look and feel of the platform. Most of the actual ICS features are present in Samsung's TouchWiz-modified Android 4.0: You will get things like the new multitasking menu, the revamped lock screen with optional facial recognition, and the improved system settings."

Doesn't sound like that big a deal.

mikecane2• 14 years ago

>>>Doesn't sound like that big a deal.

But you're posting here at HN. For people who have never even heard of this place, it can be.

ootachi• 14 years ago

This is one of John Gruber's better insights as of late. Samsung is making the right move here: sometimes, UI consistency trumps more "daring" moves. Apple's UI consistency is quite good, especially for iOS (albeit somewhat less so for Mac OS X, especially with Lion).

masklinn2• 14 years ago

And there's of course the second shoe that TouchWiz is a differentiator for Samsung (as far as they're concerned anyway, users may or may not agree): it's part of the "value" they provide, and it's (tentatively) part of keeping users on Samsung phones: Samsung also has TouchWiz skins not just for Android but for Bada (their in-home OS), for WiMo (Omnia 1 and 2, long dead) and older smart-ish phones.

So from a business perspective, Samsung considers TouchWiz important for phones released under the Samsung brand, they're not going to switch to stock Android UI.

j_baker3• 14 years ago

It's worth pointing out that Samsung isn't necessarily keeping compatibility with Gingerbread as they are keeping compatibility with their own TouchWiz version of Gingerbread. For the most part, this is old news. It's reasonable to assume that if Samsung is going to saddle Gingerbread with proprietary UI "improvements", they're going to do the same with ICS. The fact that it lessens the difficulty of switching from one version to the next is an unintentional side effect.

lukeschlather• 14 years ago

Mostly Samsung gets around this issue by never doing OTA updates. (Example being this Samsung Stratosphere I'm typing on right now.)

andybak• 14 years ago

Gruber is confusing two things. If someone agreed to a Windows update download and the entire UI changed then, yes, they would be surprised and rightfully distressed.

However - if they, asy, upgraded from Windows XP to Vista then they would not be. They might even be looking forward to a UI overhaul in the name of 'progress'.

Aren't we talking about the latter case here?

masklinn2• 14 years ago

> Aren't we talking about the latter case here?

From a technical point of view probably, but from a user point-of-view, if the update can be delivered OTA? That's more questionable.

Furthermore the difference between Ginger/TouchWiz and ICS is arguably far larger than that between XP and Vista (ignoring Vista being half-baked and half-broken on release).

AndrewDucker• 14 years ago

Not to most users. Most users have no idea about versions of operating systems on their phone.

They bought a phone, they _may_ know that it's an Android phone, or they may just know they bought a Samsung phone. They probably don't even think about it having an operating system as such - it's a phone, not a computer, as far as most people are concerned.

nknight2• 14 years ago

Actually, people don't even think about the operating system on their computer much. They're somewhat more conscious of it, but by and large, they buy a computer and use whatever OS happened to be on it. They'll upgrade their OS when they buy a new computer.

steele• 14 years ago

I believe first time smartphone users know/acknowledge that they are getting a form of computer of a higher order than other consumer electronics.

protomyth2• 14 years ago

The "looking forward to" part is the problem. A simple OTA update that totals out the interface is not going to be a welcome thing unless your target audience is expecting the change.

Microsoft and Apple spend a lot of money and generate a lot of hype for their new OS changes. Google isn't really doing that expect in the tech community. Also, Microsoft (PC, trying on mobile) and Apple (PC and mobile) are the voice for the devices. Google is still in the OEM supplier stage and doesn't have the reach to the consumer level.

Raphael2• 14 years ago

Google does reach the consumer with their Android apps, such as Gmail and Play (the app and entertainment store).

mikecane2• 14 years ago

People -- including me -- get upset as hell when cable providers move channels around (I can't find CNN now, for example). And that's not really a UI change, either. The crappy cable guide UI generally remains the same. But now some of the "buttons" have been moved.

ebf• 14 years ago

I would say your example is not analogous. To upgrade from XP to Vista, the user has to purchase Vista and go through the install process. To upgrade from 3.x to ICS, the user simply downloads an OTA update.

The upgrade to ICS can be done by casual users, who may not even know that they are upgrading to ICS, whereas the XP user is clearly making the decision to upgrade to a new OS.

Shank• 14 years ago

To be fair, if you flash ICS over an older version, stock and unmodified, it does present the "Android is Upgrading" screen.

It'd be easy for Samsung to deploy a website and make a tour of ICS, and tout it as a fully fledged upgrade.

rsynnott4• 14 years ago

> Aren't we talking about the latter case here?

No. When someone upgrades to Vista, they go out and buy a Vista CD. When they upgrade to ICS, they just press 'yes' in the dialog asking if they want to upgrade (or in extreme cases, do nothing; a few Android vendors have at least occasionally pushed out upgrades which happen without user intervention).

drivebyacct2• 14 years ago

The intro text isn't as clear as it should be. ICS for devices that shipped with TW and Froyo/Gingerbread looks the same as the OS that shipped with it. For new devices, it seems and is likely that ICS will look more ICS-y. If you excuse the acronyms.

davepm• 14 years ago

most non-casual users (ie geeks like us) would know how to get what we want (vanilla ICS). I don't see a problem, they are keeping the casual users happy with no major changes, but know that the tech savy will easily manage to just install a pure ICS if thats what they want.

j_baker3• 14 years ago

I get what Gruber is saying here, but I disagree. Now to be fair, I think the problem of consistency is real, and I think this is something Android needs to be better about.

Now, that said, I don't think the solution is to have manufacturers build proprietary visual interfaces. That's clearly at least as motivated by Samsung wanting to lock users into their user interface as it is motivated by a desire for consistency.

Full disclosure: I work for Google, but probably don't have much more to do with Android than you do. I don't speak for either Android or Google.

Steko3• 14 years ago

It's differentiation not lock in. Both Touchwiz and Sense look better for the many off the street customers.

j_baker3• 14 years ago

My brother would disagree with you. He got a Samsung phone and he's stuck with it for years for the simple fact that it's the only phone he's learned to use and he doesn't want to learn a new one. If Samsung was running a stock version of Android, he'd probably be able to switch to any other Android phone.

angryasian• 14 years ago

its far from lock in. If you're not an android use you may not know, but Android is very customizable offering several launchers. If they wanted a more stock look its very easy to get.

mrhyperpenguin• 14 years ago

Sure consistency is great but it doesn't trump everything else. If that were the case we would still be using Nokia style interfaces from the 90s.

Samsung might benefit from adopting the Android 4.0 UI. If they did, assuming other vendors do the same, there would be a more unified UI throughout all Android smartphones, not unlike iOS. And people complain about Android fragmentation...

twargoth2• 14 years ago

Why would a handset manufacturer want the UI on their devices to look like those on every other? The thinking here is to differentiate as much as possible - so TouchWiz helps by making the Samsung devices look different than other models you see in a store. This is the "value add" over stock Android.

aristidb• 14 years ago

I have another hypothesis: Maybe they don't want to make it so blatantly obvious that only a small portion of their handsets, excluding even phones introduced in 2011(1), will actually get the Android 4.0 update. So they might want to downplay the significance of Android 4.0.

(1) Like the Samsung Galaxy S Plus, which has faster hardware than my Nexus S with ICS.

twargoth2• 14 years ago

You raise an excellent point, thought there's no reason there can't be multiple rationales here.

jrockway• 14 years ago

[users] would totally freak out if they OK’d an over-the-air software update that completely changed the entire UI of their phone

Microsoft does this every year with the XBox 360, and it doesn't seem to have caused anyone any major problems. Progress is difficult, but that doesn't mean we should stop progressing.

MaxGabriel• 14 years ago

I suspect that its a different matter of updating for Android phone users, who may not be tech savvy and have just gotten the phone the AT&T store handed them, versus the much younger and more technical Xbox 360 demographic. Edit: And don't see why this wouldn't apply to iOS, too.

rsynnott4• 14 years ago

> Edit: And don't see why this wouldn't apply to iOS, too.

While iOS's UI has changed somewhat since release, the changes have generally been extremely subtle; the _largest_ was 4 to 5, when a few of the widgets changed a bit.

ricardobeat2• 14 years ago

The average gamer is ~36 years old [citation needed].

rsynnott4• 14 years ago

The vast majority of XBox 360 users don't really interact with the UI that much, though; they just stick the disk in.

dlikhten• 14 years ago

I hate to say it, the problem is 100% valid. Worse is that Android stock interface is GARBAGE. Even if performance is great.

the tech unsavvy don't give a shit about customizations and custom launchers. They want a phone that works and is easy to use.

If anything Google should be making a wonderful interface, not just performance but INTERFACE.

nextparadigms• 14 years ago

Does that mean Windows 8 is doomed to fail?

brianpan• 14 years ago

Windows 8 is not an over-the-air type of automatic update. It's something a user decides to go to buy and install. This is the type of thing where you _do_ want it to look at least a little different, otherwise the user will have the feeling they paid for "nothing".

That's undoubtable one of the reasons that the Snow Leopard price was so low ($29 vs $129), even though I assume it was on the same order in terms of engineering effort.

Raphael2• 14 years ago

There will be resistance to the new interface. The severity is anyone's guess. Microsoft is betting that most people will acclimate to it.

thought_alarm2• 14 years ago

This kind of rationalization from Gruber and most other people here would seem rather silly to anyone who knows a thing or two about how the cell phone industry actually works.

If a major carrier wanted stock ICS on all their phones, that's exactly what they would get, and manufacturers like Samsung and LG would trip over themselves to be the first to make it happen.

Virtually all of the software you see on your phone is there because your carrier wanted it there. Any software that's missing is missing because your carrier wanted it removed. It has nothing to do with Samsung; it's not their decision. Their only goal is to make the carrier happy.

All that prime shelf space that Samsung currently enjoys depends entirely on meeting the carriers' precise specifications, and that includes all future software updates. Manufacturers compete with each other for that precious shelf space, and will do whatever the carrier wants to get it.

RandallBrown• 14 years ago

but samsung, HTC, etc. have to differentiate from each other to sell their phones to the carrier too.

I think Apple is changing the industry by not taking any more shit from the carriers. I'm not saying that any other company would be able to successfully do the same, but I think these custom UI skins are some sort of lame attempt to do that.

thought_alarm2• 14 years ago

That's partially true. But more importantly, when a manufacturer like Samsung meets with a major carrier to show off their latest line of devices, the carrier will invariably come back with a list of demands and changes that they'll need to see before they'll agree to carry the devices.

In order to respond quickly to the carrier's requests, a manufacturer needs their own custom platform and code base to work from, and that's why each manufacturer has their own custom Android UI platform to work with. It's a situation RIM played very well back in 2006/2007/2008, where they not only controlled the software platform top to bottom, they provided a surprisingly flexible theme engine to allow each carrier to quickly design their own custom home screen UI; some quite beautiful (especially from some of the European and UK carriers), others not so much, but all radically different from one another.

Apple completely changed the game by creating a device that average users would gladly dump their carriers for, and that alone takes away most of the power from the carriers. Today I think Apple, Microsoft, and even RIM are pushing to change users' expectations about how much control the carrier should have over their cell phone software. But the old guard manufacturers like Samsung and LG have been amazingly successful playing the cell phone industry by the traditional rules, so I think we as consumers still have a long, long way to go before we'll see any real change from the carriers or old school phone manufacturers.

Why This Is What Samsung Is Calling Ice Cream Sandwich

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